


The Humility to Ask for Help

by EverythingNarrative



Series: World War Etheria [3]
Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: AU, Acrtic Expedition, Alcohol, Blood and Violence, Canon Rewrite, Desert Expedition, Gen, Language, Logistics, Magic and Science, Military, Nobledark, Permanent Injury, Psychological Trauma, War, Worldbuilding, rational
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-08
Updated: 2020-11-11
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:08:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 16
Words: 55,555
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26894197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EverythingNarrative/pseuds/EverythingNarrative
Summary: Adora searches for Mara's legacy.Catra searches for Entrapta's requested components.They clash in the north.They clash in the desert.True strength is not unyielding fortitude, but —
Relationships: Adora & Bow & Glimmer (She-Ra), Adora/Glimmer (She-Ra), Catra & Entrapta & Scorpia (She-Ra), Catra & Hordak (She-Ra), Catra & Scorpia (She-Ra), Catra/Scorpia (She-Ra), Entrapta/Hordak (She-Ra), Huntara/Melissa (She-Ra), Mermista/Sea Hawk (She-Ra)
Series: World War Etheria [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1923616
Comments: 29
Kudos: 55





	1. Rest and Recuperation, Rearmament and Rehab

**Author's Note:**

> CW: This work contains written scenes describing a similar level of violence to what is seen in movies such as Saving Private Ryan, Dunkirk, 1917, Letters from Iwo Jima, Flags of Our Fathers; and TV shows such as Band of Brothers, and Pacific. It also contains similar levels of swearing.

With nothing better to do than give lectures and wait for She-Ra to recover, Adora more or less moves into the Hidden Library. This has several calculated advantages:

First, it puts her in position to try to make sense of the readings of First-Ones’ tech under Horde control, based on day-to-day updates. Bow and his crew are competent at using their tech, but she has an eye for the enemy

Second, it puts her within two hours of the Crystal Castle, enabling her to get frequent updates on She-Ra’s recovery which is progressing nicely, although slowly. Adora has severely underutilized Light Hope, as a resource.

Third, it puts her in the middle of the people who arguably loves her the very most, in beautiful surroundings. Perfect setting for a little working vacation away from the carnage and horror of the front lines.

She keeps up with her teaching workload by making the trip from the middle of the forest to Brightmoon on Mondays to give a late lecture, stay overnight in Brightmoon, and then give another early lecture before heading back to the library.

* * *

The reports have trickled in and they paint an interesting picture of the battle of the Ash Corridor, especially the fighting retreat the Horde army was led into for the week following the battle. They have now taken up defensive holdings at Adora’s old base.

“What is it exactly you’re teaching again?” Bow asks her at one point — a mistake, he realises as soon as he has said it: Bow is no officer, and while technically skilled has little interest in the finer arts of warfare. He winces internally, as Adora no doubt is about to give him a length technical lecture.

“Say for the sake of argument you’re the commander of an infantry regiment,” Adora says.

“Okay.”

“What do you do against a cavalry charge?”

“Muster the men together and present a spear wall?” Bow asks.

“And what against a regiment of longbows?”

“Scatter the men and find cover.”

“Now suppose I have a regiment of longbows, and cavalry charge lined up. Do you scatter and find cover, letting my cavalry pick your men off, or do you present a spear wall and let my longbows volley with impunity?” Adora asks.

“Ah,” Bow says. “I see the problem. That’s simpler than I thought it would be. Obvious even.”

Adora nods. “Harder to implement, both just realizing when it is possible, and also designing operations to take advantage. It’s called ‘Combined Arms Doctrine,’ in case you want to read up on it.”

“If you’re this succinct in your lectures, I see why they are popular.”

“Thanks.”

* * *

Adora hands off the sheaf of papers to one of her teaching assistants.

“Hey, Adora!”

Adora winces, and spins to see Glimmer coming down the auditorium stairs. She comes up to Adora, throws her cloak aside and sits down on the desk.

“Please don’t say that,” Adora says.

“What? Why?”

“It’s what Catra always said to me. And what she taunts me with now every time we’ve met as enemies.”

Glimmer inhales through her teeth. “Okay, yeah. Ouch. Sorry.”

Adora waves her apology off. “What can I do for you?”

“Where are you staying? It’s too late to make it all the way back to the Hidden Library, and you’ve ended the lease on your apartment.”

Adora waves over the scribe who has been transcribing the whole lecture for subsequent publication. Penned shorthand is easier on Adora’s eyes than regular text. “Well, I am a General, so I was thinking of finding a modest Officer’s Suite at the city garrison, and maybe go for a run on their track circuit in the morning.”

“Do that next week. I’m going to Candila in the foremorrow, and I won’t be back for a week. The Princess’ suite is nicer than any Officer’s suite anyway.”

Adora looks at Glimmer, who winks back, and flares her pinions.

“Of course, your Majesty,” Adora says mockingly. There are other ways to de-stress than a morning run, after all.

* * *

“Where is everybody?” Adora asks.

“Sleeping,” Bow notes. “Civilians, you know? My fathers are… Academics. Staying up late reading, you know.” As are all the other ones currently living in the dorms above the common room.

“Ah.”

Adora’s internal clock has long since been running exclusively on military time.

Bow is a ranger. One can easily imagine what inane proverb they have regarding their tendency to rise before the sun.

It is dark out, and the air is icy. They are both in shirt-sleeves and trousers, ready by sheer ingrained habit, for physical exercise.

“I miss running track,” Adora says.

“I’ll take you hiking later if you want to see some views?” Bow suggests. “Otherwise, it’s jump rope or nothing.”

Adora takes the jump rope from Bow. They skip until it hurts good, and then proceed with body-weight exercise. The upshot of not having track, is the tree climbing that Bow swears by, instead of push-ups and crunches — Adora enjoys body-weight exercise the same way she enjoys cod-liver oil: reluctantly.

Adora hops down from the low branches, and Bow is standing there, looking east. “Look at that sun rinse,” he says.

She does. It’s beautiful.

“Let’s go to the range,” he says.

“But I don’t arch— I don’t know how to bow and arrow.”

Bow smiles. “I know that. Which is why I pulled some strings — in your name… I may have forged that chicken-scratch you call a signature. Come with.” He grabs his coat, and tosses Adora hers.

He leads her past the treeline, still within the perimeter that surrounds the Library, to a small ravine. At one end, sits several bullseye-targets painted crudely on the ends of sawn logs. At the other, is a table consisting of boards laid across two stumps.

Bow is bringing his bow, of course. He only has five, and isn’t about to leave them lying around. However, he has left a sealed crate there, lying possibly overnight, on the table.

Adora approaches it. It has a Brightmoon military proof stamp for captured goods. Bow hands her a small pry bar, and she forces the lid off. Inside is a _lever action carbine._

Adora hyperventilates a little bit. These are the limousines of target shooting in the Horde army. Light, controllable, quick to cycle, and ballistically performant, chambered in a magnum pistol cartridge.

Most officers don’t bother carrying one, seeing as regulations stipulate that training ammo is only provided in full-power rifle, and service pistol calibers. Most officers are misers like that, and thus practice with their infantry carbines, which are clunky bolt-actions with way too much recoil.

And Bow has managed to circumvent the horror of horrors of having a wonderful gun with no ammo: in there in the hay sits several cases of magnum pistol ammo.

“You like that, huh?” Bow asks.

“Is it that obvious?” Adora says, picking up the rifle and looking down the ghost-ring aperture sights. “Oh, you are a beauty, what nasty Horde officer got herself captured to let you end up in my hands?” she croons.

Bow snickers and strings his bow, and lashes the quiver to his belt.

Adora takes out a box of ammo, stuffs her pocket full of the delicate-looking brass — the standard full-power rifle cartridge in the Horde is steel-cased — and starts loading the gun.

Bow looses a few shafts with tight grouping, taking his time to draw each arrow from the quiver. The targets are set up at fifty yards.

“So, do we just stand and shoot, because… I mean, I might be rusty, but I qualified top of my class at two-hundred yards with a shittier rifle than this slick thing.”

“What?” Bow asks. “What else would we do?”

“Ever heard of action shooting drills?”

“No?” Bow says, intrigued.

Adora grins, and they spend the next thirty minutes setting up positions of cover, and additional targets, hashing out the maneuvering and the target orders, and then running the drill: Bow gleefully runs from cover to cover with a fistful of arrows and a lover’s gentle grip on his bow.

When Adora goes after him, she does so with mechanical precision, quickly polishing her skill up to the illustrious standards of the Horde army officer training programs she went through before enlisting.

The fun of a drill, however, is repetition. They end up being way lat for breakfast and ravenously hungry. Bow is by the end of it, still faster than Adora, infuriatingly so. He lives up to his name.

* * *

Their days are filled with work: on the tracker, on translating First-Ones’ texts, on meticulously cross-referencing what Light Hope tells Adora. Their leisure time is only when they are pulled kicking and screaming away by their girlfriends.

At some point in the winter, Bow and Perfuma fell in together. It was inevitable, really. Somewhere in the chaos of defending the southern Whispering Woods, love bloomed on the battlefield.

Glimmer’s schedule is unpredictable, split between wrangling the diplomatic relations with Candila, drilling her men as Commandant, practicing sorcery, and being followed everywhere she goes by her customary four armed guards.

Perfuma has her religious duties as the Speaker for the Trees, and patrols the forest perhaps even more so than any ranger. It’s getting to the point where her plant beasts numbers outnumber the animals three-to-one, near the firebreak. Those are also getting more terrifying by the day. How such a sweet, kind young woman, concerning herself with tea blends and mindfulness meditation, contains the seeds of such abominable killing machines, is a mystery for the ages.

At night, they steal away to talk around a campfire. For a moment, they forget the war.

* * *

Adora’s recurring nightmare is of Cometa dying in her arms, waking up teary-eyed and shaking. In her dream, she sees Catra contorted to demonic proportions, loosening the fatal shot with glee.

Glimmer’s recurring nightmare is Bow buckling under the blows, of the emaciated old lady telling her she was ready to die and that it was okay, of Glimmer visualizing and putting a bubble in her bloodstream. She wakes bathed in sweat and full of burning rage; never able to fall asleep again afterwards. Had Bow not killed that researcher, she might have liked to strangle him herself.

Bow’s recurring nightmare is running through the woods, and being late. Finding the Hidden Library reduced to rubble, and his fathers and older brothers all dead. He’s stopped sleeping with a knife under his pillow because of it. Wolfclaw is there sometimes, berating him for… Something. Mike too.

Perfuma’s recurring nightmare is fire.

It’s less painful when there’s someone to hold. It’s more painful on the six other days of the week when they sleep alone, apart.

* * *

It’s one of those nights, around the campfire. The weather is almost getting warm enough that one doesn’t need both a coat and a cloak. Glimmer and Bow have gone into the Library basement to plunder the wine cellar, leaving Perfuma and Adora alone.

“I’ve heard about your situation from Bow,” Perfuma says, “with She-Ra, and everything.”

Adora raises an eyebrow. She reaches out and throws another log on the fire.

“I think it’s very admirable of you to stay brave.”

Adora snickers. “Perfuma, please.”

“I mean it. You’re a very strong person, Adora. In ways I aspire to. I don’t know what I would ever do if I lost the my connection to the Heartblossom.”

“If we keep fighting, you might. Glimmer did. I healed her, but I won’t be able to do that again anytime soon,” Adora says.

“Why not?”

“My healing powers need love, and…”

“What?”

Adora groans. “It’s complicated. I’m going to need to tell you my entire life’s story.”

Perfuma shrugs. “If you want to form a bond, I’ll happily tell you a little about myself in return.”

“Don’t let me stop you.” Adora pulls her cloak closer against the cold. Perfuma seems quite unmothered, despite wearing her cloak with no coat under.

“I’m half dryad, by blood. My bearing mother was human, but my initiating mother was this tree spirit person? I never met her, and since being the Heartblossom wielder I have tried finding her, but I never could.”

Adora nods.

“Also, I was presumed to be a boy upon my birth.”

Adora blinks. “What?”

“In Mystacor they call it ‘gender-sex disparity.’ I realized I was always meant to be a girl, at a young age. Around the same time the Heartblossom chose me. I’ve had some enhancements that helped me grow up to be in accordance with how I feel my body should be.”

“So you have a p—”

“That’s a bit private, Adora.”

Adora blushes furiously. “ _Sorry,_ ” she squeaks. “I— My curiosity gets the best of me sometimes. And by sometimes I mean often. Sorry.”

Perfuma smiles. “It’s quite alright. Many people don’t realize they are being rude.”

Adora exhales, and looks into the fire.

“I’m an orphan,” she begins. "Well, not anymore, not since I found Razz. But until this winter, I had no known family. I was raised in orphanages and by this _really_ awful foster mother named Shadow Weaver. An evil sorceress.

"Like, she would give beatings for speaking out of turn, and resort to using magic on me and my adopted sister when physical violence wasn’t sufficient, and threatening to hurt other people for my transgressions. That kind of thing.

"When I was a little girl, I befriended another girl living in the street one summer. We grew pretty close, and I had the brilliant idea that we could be sisters or something. I’m not sure how I managed to beg Shadow Weaver into adopting her, but she used that against me a _lot._

"We were always together after that. Sleeping in orphanage dorms, going to school and pre-recruitment together. We made plans to climb the ranks in the field until nobody could tell us what to do.

“Then I became She-Ra, and I defected, and we became enemies. And I thought she might defect too, and redeem herself, or something. But she keeps coming up with new horrible things to do instead. At the battle, she killed Princess Cometa. Now… Now I’m not so sure she is redeemable.”

Perfuma looks into the campfire. After a while, she begins speaking:

" _Not all the lost souls will wander,  
the wither gives way to the new,  
of glittering gold fools are fonder,  
deep roots are from whence it all grew._

“ _Fires beget fetid ashes,  
in gray death blooms newfound renown,  
blade given curve only threshes,  
the king is bereft of his crown,_”

There’s a moment of silence. “What?” Adora asks, confused.

"It’s a religious verse I’m fond of. In context, it’s part of this narrative about forest fires, which you might guess has been on my mind.

“I like to read it as saying that people who need help the most often cannot receive it before they change; sometimes drastically; sometimes in ways that you cannot help them with. The worst thing you can do is lose hope.”

“Thanks.”

* * *

It takes two weeks to get the ship requisitioned, fueled, loaded, and retrofitted for a military mission. A week of navy engineers working in shifts.

Catra boards the _Sunflower,_ a heavy icebreaker — nominally a research vessel — and which has served to make ice-free paths for other ships many times. This voyage it is the only ship.

It is crewed by a core group of veterans that know their way around the arctic seas. Catra’s outfit consists of Kyle, Rogelio, Lonnie, and two dozen soldiers — a mix of Special Operations NCO’s and Special Services officers. To that are two dozen mariners hand-picked by Scorpia, and a dozen odd-job engineers and science-people, and a single surgeon, to help Entrapta.

On deck, machine guns and one-pounder cannons are emplaced for defense. There is no superstructure to mount a main gun in, but torpedo tubes can sit on deck.

Its cargo hold is stocked with food, fuel, First-Ones’ tech, and stock material for en-route fabrication.

The fabricator itself is powered by the ship’s powertrain, a state-of-the-art diesel-electric generator, powering everything on ship, including the engines.

Doing so unaided would quickly deplete the fuel, so the _Sunflower_ has been fitted with three of the ‘small’ portable First-Ones’ generators — which provides abysmal mass-to-power and barely fits in a truck, but does so reliably and essentially for free. If everything else is turned off, the ship can go half power without using fuel. If the fabricator runs at full power, the lights flicker.

The ship’s interior is reminiscent of military ships, but only to a degree — there’s no armory or munitions store, for instance, and the engine room is placed for access rather than good shielding.

Catra carries just her kit, and a lever-action rifle. Light enough to shoot with the barrel merely resting on her left arm. That is all it’s good for now, that and a wristwatch.

Two mariners come up and pull the gangplank.

The ship sets out, and Catra slinks below decks to find her cabin.

* * *

Entrapta ‘oohs’ and ‘aahs’ a bit too much for Catra’s taste.

Whatever that woman is up to, medically, is decades beyond the greatest doctors in the Fright Zone. She’s asked Catra to lie on a stretcher a strange cylindrical machine for long enough that she almost dozed off, and now, on a phosphorescent screen, they are inspecting a complete image of Catra’s innards. Or rather, the image somehow emerges from the screen, into the world.

“See? Your spinal implant is deteriorating. We’ll need to replace that as well.”

Her hair is done up in a ponytail now, and seems even fluffier and more impossibly voluminous than ever; and the quadruple manipulators on her back might as well be permanently affixed to her now.

“So, that’s the bad news. You vitals are really good, for someone with the third-gen enhancements. Though you are beginning to go gray around the ears, but that might just be genetic.”

Catra is taken a little aback. She’s not vain, but she _is_ going gray and getting crows’ feet. At twenty. Third-gen enhancements are provably safe, but does have documented negative impact on life-expectancy. They are meant to be reversed after service, and Catra does plan to do so, after the war.

“The good news is, your arm is healing nicely. I’ll be able to start working on designing the prosthetic right away, and we can make it minimally invasive, surgery wise. It won’t be as strong as your other hand, but—”

“I don’t want that,” Catra says. “If you have the time, I would rather you go all out. If we’re putting me under the knife, we might as well replace my entire arm; if that’s feasible.”

Entrapta bends a pair of manipulators to sit on, steeples the fingers of the other two, rubs her chin with her hair, scratches her head with one hand and drums the fingers of her other hand on her knee. It’s the most intense gestural thinking Catra has ever seen.

“It’s going to take a lot of time.”

“Do you have something better to do?” Catra asks. “We’re on a _ship_ for the foreseeable future.”

Entrapta’s eyes light up. “I _doo~n’t_ have anything better to do.” She hurries over to a desk, scrabbling for paper and pen to put to it.

Catra slowly starts grinning. “Don’t forget, you’re replacing my spinal implant too, right?”

“I haven’t!” she says, gesturing with a manipulator hand, crudely wagging a thick semi-translucent finger.

* * *

_“Major Catra, I’d like to say two things about Entrapta: first, she is my wife. Remember that. If anything happens to her…” Hordak sighs, and clenches his fist. “Second, do encourage her; she likes that. In my experience her greatest weakness is a tendency to solve the wrong problem, so help her prioritize. And don’t underestimate her — she’s different, not stupid.”_

_“Why aren’t you telling this to the lieutenant?” Catra asks._

_“Because she knew this from the moment she started working with Entrapta, without ever being told. You and I, we are different from her kind. Consult with her; she has intutitions you lack in the intrapersonal sphere.”_

_“I’ll take that to heart, O, wise Chancellor.”_

_“You jest, but all of this I know only through meticulous observation and many costly failures.”_

* * *

Catra hops off the examination table, and heads over to Entrapta’s work table. “Maybe we can make them less conspicuous too, same color as my fur?”

“Oh that’s a given,” Entrapta says. “In fact, what I’ve seen of the First-Ones’ cybernetic pattern templates, they can change color and texture.”

“And remember that I have clawed fingers — could you make it so it can transform between human-like and—”

“Catra, I appreciate your input, but just assume that I have already considered it. Cybernetics is my specialty; I was doing it before I had a fabricator to work with.”

Entrapta heads out of the room and into the next bulkhead, where the main workshop is set up. She heads to the data-terminal and starts running through the Rolodex of data crystals. It’s bizarre to see the juxtaposition of the sleek First-Ones’ pattern devices, and the jury-rigged contraptions and interfaces between them.

“ _Oo~h_ ” Entrapta croons.

“What?”

“There’s _surgery aids_ in these. I haven’t actually had the time to read anything more than the first few lines of this documentation. They’re self-installing.”

Catra blinks. Having the spinal implant install was a horrifying twelve-hour surgical procedure, with two weeks of healing and rehab despite her enhancements.

“You’ll still need some time, but overall? If we start now, you might be fully operational by the time we arrive in the Northern Reach.”


	2. Ice Breakers, Hee-bees

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> cw: insects

Part of any intelligence operation is meticulous record keeping.

Adora is forever thankful that she’s not bad with numbers, the same way she is with letters. She pages through the sheaves of records — they’ve brought in more technicians, and a tent camp in Brightmoon colors has sprung up outside the Hidden Library. Bow and the Mystacor technicians has found the most fruitful views the Globe is capable of, and they have manned it around the clock, numbering the energy signatures and their location, by date.

There’s two particularly worrying things: one is a patch of devices that appears to be growing, slowly but surely, in the rural Fright Zone outside Capital. Another is a collection of devices with a similar signature moving north over the Shattered sea, towards the Northern Reach archipelago.

Towards the blip that _might_ be Mara’s spacecraft.

“Shit,” Adora says. “Bow!? Come look at this!”

* * *

“Are you _sure_ you don’t know anything about something right here in this region?” Adora asks, pointing to the Northern Reach on the small ornate globe.

“`Why are you so intent on asking me for the locations of things?`” Light Hope asks, answering a question with another.

“We have a… Device that can track First-Ones’ artifacts,” Adora says. “All of them. Globally.”

“`Interesting. How is this constructed?`”

“With sorcery or something; I don’t really know. The sorcerers don’t really know either.”

“`Hm. I am currently cut off from Etheria's broader tracking subsystems, but I can indirectly confirm that they are fully functioning. I cannot access the logs, but might I propose the hypothesis that this is what you are doing? They were designed for remote access by authorized clients. Perhaps the authorization system has defaulted.`”

“Aha, aha. Interesting. Very interesting,” Adora says. “How… How reliable is it?”

“`In recorded history, infallible.`”

“Is there any chance it would… Withhold data, or otherwise deceive?”

“`You are very distrustful, Adora. No. It is designed as a piece of stable infrastructure for civilian usage. It even has a personality construct, who has --- how did Mara put it --- a stick up her hindquarters.`”

“Yeah, Okay. You’re cut off? How could I potentially fix that?”

“`There is a struture in the centeral Apierian plains, called The Watchtower. It was shattered during the calamity.`”

“Hm. And if I restore that… Is there anything else that you also get access to?”

“`Yes.`”

“Which is?”

“`I'm barred from telling you, but it would be enough for me to activate the self-repair of several other systems, and eventually regain full faculties.`”

“Hm. We might be going to Apieria soon. Say, do you have an armoury?”

“`The Crytal Castle has several armouries. What are you looking for?`”

“Small arms. Without the Aegis, I’m pretty useless, even as She-Ra.”

Light Hope stands, and the room around them fades into nothingness. The walls recede, forming a uniform white void. Sections of the floor rumble and start rising, revealing racks full of weapons.

“Who-ho-how,” Adora says. “I don’t even know where to start…” She shrugs her lever-action off her shoulder and hands it to Light Hope. “What do you say to this one?”

Light Hope expertly handles it, clearing it and inspecting the sights. “`Decent accuracy for combat marksmanship, out-dated action, slow cyclic rate. For pleasure shooting only.`”

“Aw, I like that rifle,” Adora whines, half joking.

“`Sorry,`” Light Hope says. “`My evaluation might have been overly practical; it is important that one 'likes' ones weapon of choice, as emotional affect has real consequences for frequency of practice sessions.`”

Adora blinks. “I did not know that. What about we find a handgun?”

“`Might I suggest...`” Light Hope waves a hand, causing the shelves to roll by. “`This one.`” She takes down something that Adora only recognizes as a firearm due to the obvious business end, and a guarded trigger. It looks like a rifle buttstock with a pair of big holes drilled in it; it has no barrel.

Light Hope brandishes it by putting her thumb though the hole, and shouldering the metal buttplate, causing it to slide outwards on a pair of rails. “`The mark nine Yala-Zev sub-carbine holoprojector.`”

The weapon racks recede, in favor of a firing range. A series of man-sized targets seemingly made of something gelatinous rise out of the ground. Light Hope takes aim and fires an extended salvo of high-rate automatic fire at one, tearing the gel to shreds to the sound of buzzing like a swarm of angry bees.

She flicks a control, and takes aim at the next target, and shoots a much slower staccato burst, of pin-point fire on the target.

Last, she flicks the control once more, switches targets, and takes the head clean off the dummy with a single shot.

“`Light and soft-recoiling enough to fire without shouldering. Ambidexterous safety and fire-mode control. Internal power source should last the entire viable service life of the weapon superstructure. Fires 'hard-light' projectiles in three modes: high-rate light auto, high-power armor-defeating, and breeching slug.`”

She hands it to Adora.

The first thing to come into Adora’s head is that this isn’t a gun. It’s a funny-shaped piece of dark wood, a stock without any actual gun parts inside. It’s a foot and a half long. Adora shoulders it, flicks the controls from ‘safe’ to ‘kill’ and makes a cheek weld. There’s some kind of optical phenomenon when looking down the top of it, showing a sight picture, instead of anything resembling conventional sights.

She pulls the crisp and smooth trigger, and the weapon sings, spraying a continuous stream of low-caliber death down range.

“I’ll take it,” Adora says, almost breathless.

It comes with holster and a sling.

* * *

Catra wakes up in an infirmary bed, and feels like someone dislocated her entire spine and left shoulder. There’s tendrils of fire worming through her pectoral, clawing at her shoulder blades. It feels like needles crawling up her scalp and down into her pelvis and tail.

She hisses, and the hiss becomes a yowl.

“Oh shit!” Entrapta says. “She’s in a lot of pain! Get her some morphine!”

“Shouldn’t we put her under again?”

“No! The protocol is to wake the patient, then do pain-management. The implants need to calibrate themselves against the waking brain!”

There’s a needle in Catra’s arm, and the edge is taken off.

Entrapta leans over Catra. “How do you feel?”

“Like I just came out of general anaesthesia,” Catra answers.

“Any abnormalities? Numbness in your extremities?”

Catra curls her toes. “I’m good.”

“Great! A preliminary success!” Entrapta says. “Keep her under observation, and come get me if there’s anything. I’m going to go sleep.”

Catra turns her head, with some difficulty, to look at the surgeon. He’s human. “What time is it?”

“Mid-afternoon. On Thursday. There were complications during the removal of your old implant. Entrapta has spent the better part of thirty hours, trying to get this to work. We’re almost out of blood and plasma, though I’m told the ‘fabricator’ can make more of both.”

Catra looks him over. “Haven’t you both been on for thirty hours?”

“I had a field medic relieve me for a while. Get some sleep.”

Catra closes her eyes, just for a moment.

“Hey Wildcat,” Scorpia says.

Catra looks about for the doctor. “Where’s the surgeon?”

“Oh, I relieved him a few hours ago. You’ve been sleeping for —” she checks her watch “— ten hours, going on eleven.”

Catra sits up in bed. Her mouth feels like something curled up and died on her tongue a week ago.

She runs a hand through her hair.

Scorpia snickers.

“What?”

“Look at you, southpaw.”

Catra looks down at her left hand. Supply synthetic flesh, faint lines joining the segments of artificial skin. She makes a fist, unfurls her claws. It feels exactly — _exactly_ — like her old arm. She scratches the back of her new hand. “I’ve had an itch there since I lost my hand,” she says.

Scorpia picks up her chart with remarkably dexterous pincers.

“No gloves?” Catra asks.

“I have to take them off sometimes,” Scorpia says. “Whole host of bad things can happen if you wear them too long. Anyway —” she taps the chart “— says here to keep it in a sling, actually, while your shoulder heals.”

* * *

“Well, we need to catch them, don’t we?” Glimmer says.

They are holding the initial briefing at the Library: just the four of them and George and Lance. The weekly get-together has turned serious.

“Yeah, there’s just one problem,” Adora says. She gestures to herself. “She-Ra is still out of the action.”

“Duh,” Glimmer says. “What’s Light Hope saying about that? Two weeks?”

“Yeah.”

Glimmer turns to the big globe, which shows the little dot of light steadily making its way north. It has taken a course that avoids the Apierian archipelagos and mainland, a significant detour. Records show they have been underway for a week, arithmetic projects they will be underway for two more. The ship isn’t fast, by Horde standards, and occasionally it stops on the open seas for a day or two.

“If we waygate to Apieria, and buy passage on one of their arctic-capable vessels, it’ll take us a weeks’ time to get to the Northern Reach. More, counting time to get supplies.”

Adora paces.

“Besides,” Bow adds, “it’s not going to be some smash-and-grab, for the Horde; at least I don’t think so. If it is Mara’s spacecraft, then it is going to be enormous. Moving it will take time and effort.”

“All right. Let’s go to Apieria,” Adora says. “Light Hope has a quest for me there.”

“Well!” Lance says. “It seems like you’ll need help packing!”

Bow groans. “Dad, I’m a _ranger captain!_ ”

“And yet you still forget your coat!” George adds, chuckling.

Perfuma speaks up. “Let them help, Bow. You three will need all the help you can get.”

“You’re not coming?” Glimmer asks.

“Not the whole way. I’ll join you as far as Apieria, but… I won’t be of any use in the Northern Reach.”

“Perfuma—” Bow says, stepping forward.

Perfuma produces a flower seed by sleight of hand. It blooms from her fingertip. She hands it to Bow. "Bow, my ancestry doesn’t often come up, but this is one thing where my bloodline impedes me. My mother used to call me her willow tree.

“Nothing grows in the Northern Reach; no willow trees. You know how the cold doesn’t bother me, but that’s not the whole truth. I can’t warm myself up from the inside like you can; it’s why I get cold at night, and why I love the morning sun.”

“The sun hasn’t risen in the Norther Reach yet,” Adora says quietly. “Won’t until late spring.”

“I’ll freeze to death there, no matter how many coats and cloaks I wear,” Perfuma says.

Bow puts the flower behind her ear and takes her hands in his, and smiles. “Then come along to Apieria for a few days and see us off. That will be more than enough.”

* * *

Glimmer sends out a diplomatic notice to Apieria, that they will need to purchase passage on a ship suited for arctic sailing, for official Alliance business related to the war effort.

They bring everything that one can’t buy in a busy harbor with three days to do so and the funding of Brightmoon’s treasury behind the request.

Adora’s weapons. Bow’s tracking devices. Glimmer’s spell books. Expensive medicine. Cold weather gear. And of course, people.

Adora, Bow, Glimmer, and Perfuma, as a given. Glimmer’s retinue of Royal Guards.

They gather in the Waygate chamber; Adora being practically early to take inventory of their carts and make sure nothing is missing. She’s not so naive as to trust servants — most nobility and dignified peoples Adora has been around, treat them like furniture: reliable and interchangeable.

That is not to say Adora doesn’t have sympathy with the massive staff that makes such a place as the Brightmoon Palace run. She just doesn’t trust them. They could very well be impostors, or worse, incompetent.

Glimmer blinks in, wordlessly kisses Adora on the cheek, and places a _second_ chest of books on one of the carts.

Okoja comes in with Bow; both of them leading horses. Okoja is wearing light and practical armor, with a rapier at her side, a musket slung on her back, and a substantial backpack.

“What, where’s the rest?” Glimmer asks Okoja.

“I’ve come to the conclusion that more people is not necessarily safer around you, Princess.” Okoja says. “You are capable of defending yourself, so what you really need is my expertise, rather than warm bodies. With due respect, you are a brat who likes ditching us whenever convenient, without ever considering just how hard you make our jobs.”

Glimmer turns a bit flushed with shame. “Sorry.”

“No need to be sorry; it’s part of my job to adapt to my charge.”

“Thank you, Captain.”

“If I may make a request, your Majesty, I would like to build a more personal rapport with you, to better protect you, and perhaps motivate you to bring me along more often. I propose we begin by referring to one another informally.”

Glimmer blinks. “Uh… Sure? You have my permission to call me ‘Glimmer,’ and forego my titles.”

“Thank you, y— Glimmer. You can call me Juliet,” Juliet says.

Perfuma comes in, accompanied by a plant beast carrying her luggage, and a tall dark stranger in Ranger garb.

“Perfuma, who’s this?” Adora asks.

The stranger casts off his hood, revealing his family connection: freckles, blond hair, and the same jawline as Perfuma, though lacking her tan.

“Lead Ranger Seneschal!” Bow exclaims. “Good to have you!”

“Scout Captain Bow,” he replies.

“For the rest of you,” Perfuma says, “this is my older half-brother, and ranger of Plumeria, Seneschal.”

“I would like to join you on your trip to the Northern Reaches. Perfuma has filled me in on the details of your operation.”

“I can vouch for his skills in combat,” Bow says.

“I’m not half the archer you are, Scout Captain; but then I have a wife and two children.”

Adora walks up to him. “We’re not going out for a hike in the woods,” she says. “We’ll most likely be clashing with the Horde. If you value your wife and children, stay home with them.”

“Adora!” Glimmer says.

“I’m serious! Show of hands, who here has dependents?”

The Captain — Juliet raises a hand. Adora turns to her. “I have an old mother at home, but if I die in the line of duty, she gets my pension.”

“General Adora,” Seneschal says. “If we don’t win this war, the Horde will burn down the rest of the Whispering woods, and my children will grow up as fugitives. If you won’t have me, I won’t come.”

Adora grits her teeth. “If you get killed, I’ll have you hanged.”

“Adora!” Perfuma protests.

Seneschal puts a hand on her shoulder, and steps forward, hand outstretched. “That’s an accord, General. Promise not to tie me a noose before you see the body, yeah?”

Adora shakes his hand.

* * *

The Apierian waygate appears wrought entirely from topaz, in three hexagonal columns, striated with impurities. There is no waygate chamber; the structure is situated inside a vast ring of basalt columns. The sun sits noticeably lower in the sky, this far north.

Inside the ring stands regularly placed guardsmen, wearing uniforms and insectoid masks that look as if they are actually the facial carapaces of enormous insects. They are also armed with cap-lock revolvers. Adora gets the _distinct_ impression that they are being watched intently by _every single one._

“My friends, you are here!” comes a strangely dissonant call from above.

Out of the air comes a _monster._ A man-sized golden-brown locust-like thing glides in on heavily-flapping wings. It lands, and its joints start contorting as it rises to upright position.

“Forgive my appearance,” it says with a feminine timbre, “if it was not clear, I am Princess-conqueror Sweet Bee of Apieria.”

It steps forward. “Ah, Princess-heir Glimmer of Brightmoon, thank you ever so much for sending notice ahead. Decorum is what separates us from beasts, is it not?”

“If you say so, Your Majesty,” Glimmer replies.

“Ah, and Princess-elect Perfuma of Plumeria, you look even more beautiful today than you did when we danced at the ball.”

Perfuma blushes a _very_ conflicted blush. Genuine compliment, terrifying delivery. “Um… Thank you?”

“And here we have the very defender of Etheria, She-Ra.”

“Call me Adora,” Adora says.

The bug person claps its hands, and several of the guards close in. “Gentlemen, please accompany these important foreign dignitaries, and make sure to provide and be helpful; they know not our customs.”

One of them steps forward, lifting up her mask, revealing herself to be an orc, purple skin tanned almost wine red, youthfully grey temples. “Captain Benedicte of the City Guard of this fair city of Honeydew, at your service,” she says.

“And with that, I shall leave you,” the bug says. “My attention is unfortunately needed at court; I have a war effort to oversee. Please come visit me if you have the time.” And with that, the bug unfurls its wings and takes off into the sky.

They calm the horses and clear the waygate… henge? And wind up in a plaza, with a view of the city, down main-streets that emanate from the waygate location.

Honeydew is an _incredibly_ well-planned city. The streets are straight and wide, clean with deep partially culverted gutters running down the center of each road. The residential blocks are all three storeys tall and of similar proportions, even if built of dissimilar materials.

In the distance, the castle — and it is a _castle_ — looms in the distance, with tall walls and rotund towers topped with artillery. Unsettlingly dark in color.

The people are similarly off — traffic moves in uniform directions on each street, with everyone walking with the gutter on their left unless they specifically need to run an errand. The insect-masked city guard patrol visibly everywhere. Gas-flame lamp posts, inert in the daylight, dot the streets.

There’s always insects flying overhead; a low droning buzz at the edge of one’s perception.

“Okay, I’ll be the first to say what I think we’re all thinking. I do _not_ like it here,” Seneschal says.

“Yeah, let’s not be rude about it,” Adora says. She turns to the guard captain. “Harbour?”

Benedicte points towards the sea. “Right down harbor street, ma’am.”

“Lead the way,” Adora says.

And so they follow the street, keeping left, six people, two horse-drawn carts, and an eight-legged plant abomination; with a city guard escort.

The docklands look like every other set of docks, except again, neater, cleaner and more orderly. The city guard are perhaps even more numerous, and the alleyways between warehouses are all gated. The warehouses themselves are timber-made with roofs in either shale or Candilan corrugated weather-resistant iron.

They find the harbormaster’s office with Benedicte’s help: a large stone building, complete with a colonnade, among the wooden warehouses. The harbormaster is an orc woman, violet-skinned with elaborately styled, and undoubtedly dyed, pitch black hair, and finely dressed in a lacy grey dress.

“What might I help you lot with?” she asks.

“We were told there would be a ship for us to purchase passage on,” Glimmer says.

“Name?”

“Princess Glimmer of Brightmoon.”

“Y’Maj’sty,” the harbor master mutters, and consults her books laid out on the desk. “Right, I received that notice. The _Forth_ has been without a destination for a while now; should have finished a planned course of de-fouling last week. Its captain will be pleased. Sixteenth pier. Good day to you.”

She hands over a slip of paper.

“That was efficient,” Adora notes as they leave, and head down the waterfront to the pier marked in large, painted numerals ‘16’.

At the end of the it lies the good ship Forth. A behemoth of a triple-masted schooner, with double-planked hull to survive freezing in, copper-plated against fouling, and steel-plated bow against sharp ice.

There’s a feliform woman in a sealskin coat taking inventory of a supply-delivery, counting crates and referencing a thick manifest, on the pier by the gangplank.

“Well met!” Glimmer says. “Is this the Forth?”

The woman looks up. Then looks over at the stern of the Forth, where the name is written in two-foot tall letters. “I don’t know,” she says. “I can’t read.”

“Har, har,” Glimmer says. “Can we speak to the captain? I’d like to hire you for a voyage.”

“Tell me who’s asking, and I’ll consider it,” she replies.

“Princess Glimmer of Brightmoon and six thousand silver marks. Today, if it pleases.”

The cat woman turns and bellows: “ _Cap! Someone’s here to buy us!_ ”

A gruff-looking human man looks over the railing, with dark-brown hair in a topknot and a bushy goatee beard, built like a barn, and wearing an enormously fluffy sweater. “What can the Forth and her Captain Schuyler Vernon do for you?” he yells in a distinctly Salinean accent.

“Sail us to the Northern Reach,” Glimmer yells back. “And back,” she adds, just in case.

“Wait,” Bow says. “Admiral Scurvy?!”

Schuyler disembarks, and joins them on the pier. “I haven’t heard that name in years now.” He squints at them. “Why, I’d be remiss if we aren’t hosting royalty. From Brightmoon; though I know not the Majesty’s name?”

“Princess Glimmer, Heiress apparent,” Glimmer introduces herself.

Schuyler turns to Bow. “Might I know where you heard my old pirate name and rank?”

“That would be from Prince Consort Sea Hawk, Captain,” Bow answers. “He’s a friend.”

Schuyler laughs heartily. “Oh, the Pirate King himself then! Come aboard, let’s negotiate. Leftenant! See to it that their horses don’t topple off the pier.”


	3. Panopticon, The Watchtower

As they make to embark by the gangplank, Adora waves over Guard Captain Benedicte.

“Juliet, Seneschal,” Adora says. “If you will, stay here and help the City Guards look after our stuff.”

Captain Schuyler runs a tight ship, and shows them to his cabin, which smells faintly of rancid oils. The ship shifts slowly under their feet. “Pardon the lack of extra chairs.”

“No need,” Adora says. “We’re hardy people.”

“Good. You’re going rather far north. Tell me, how is that rascal, Sea Hawk doing?”

“He’s just recently become a father,” Adora says. “To the Salinean heiress, no less.”

“Ah, the bliss of marriage. Never had the inclination myself; men and the sea are it for me. So. Six passengers, passage with return to Northern Reach. How long a stay?”

“Five, actually,” Perfuma says. “I haven’t the constitution for the arctic. I’m here to see the others off.”

Schuyler nods. “One less mouth to feed, that much off your price.”

“We don’t know how long,” Adora says. “We’re there to possibly intercept a Horde mission.”

Schuyler looks them over. “You’re five people. Shouldn’t you bring… You know, an army?”

“The Northern Reach has a Snows naval outpost,” Glimmer says. “If we need additional manpower, we can get it there.”

“I know. That’s the harbor we’re sailing to. It’s the only harbor on that blasted island!” Schuyler says and laughs. “Anyway. We’re doing a full re-supply. Food, water, booze, coal, equipment, repair, amenities. It’ll take a week to get it done, and it’s another week at sea if the ice is bad. I’ll have to talk to my quartermaster to get some exact figures, but eight thousand five hundred silver marks should do fine.”

“Six thousand,” Glimmer says.

“Seven thousand, eight hundred.”

“Six-five and a letter of recommendation for services rendered, and a medal.”

“Seven-five, and hold the medal — I don’t do that shit.”

“Seven, or I’ll get the Queen of Brightmoon to pin it on you.”

Schuyler laughs. “Seven thousand silver marks, you’re loading your luggage on your own, and we get to sell your horses.”

Glimmer holds out her hand and they shake on it.

* * *

They convene on the pier. “All right,” Adora says. “We have a ship. I’ll be back here in a week.” She goes to the cart and starts getting her stuff.

“I’ll come with you,” Perfuma says. She runs a hand over the bark-hide of her plant monster. “I can get you there faster than on horseback or on foot. Also, She-Ra isn’t back yet, is she?”

Adora shakes her head, and takes out a metal disc the size of a pie tin. “Light Hope, are you there?”

There’s a flicker above it, which resolves to a five-inch-tall translucent blue woman. “`Adora.`”

“We’re in Apieria, city of Honeydew by the coast, me and Princess Perfuma are about to head inland. Can you give us a bearing for our destination?”

“`With ease.`”

Adora opens a locked chest, and takes out her lever-action carbine. “Ca— Juliet,” she says.

Juliet comes over.

“Do you know how to use one of these?”

“No.”

Adora gives her a quick rundown while Glimmer and Seneschal start loading their luggage onto the Forth.

How to use the safety, run the action, reload the under-barrel tube magazine, and use the sights. “See if you can find some time to practice with it, but save at least three boxes of ammo. Treat it as you would a loaded musket, even when you think it isn’t loaded.”

“This is what they use in the Horde army?” Juliet asks.

“No, they use something a lot heavier and less handy, that shoots bullets twice the size of these ones. Never mind that this will kill a man just as dead at all ranges where it matters.”

Bow speaks up; he has observed the lecture with interest. “I thought you loved that rifle.”

“I do, but Light Hope gave me some First-Ones’ weapons that are flatly better, but which would take all day to teach,” Adora says. Then she opens the chest containing said weapons: the Yala-Zev, a pair of pistols that look more like the grips on fencing épée, and a nasty-looking combat knife.

Perfuma comes over with two horse-sized beasts. “Ready?”

“As I’ll ever be,” Adora says, slinging a translucent, bullet-proof riot shield on her back, and grabbing a travel bag with provisions and camping gear. “You?”

Perfuma claps her hands together and conjures a shield and spear, made of ash-grey wood. The bark on them peels away, revealing deep black heartwood.

Adora turns. “Hey, Captain Benedicte! We’re riding out; do you want to escort us?”

The guard captain waves down two passing patrolmen on horseback.

* * *

It’s an exceedingly boring trip. Apieria is, apart from the coastal regions and its rich coastal archipelago in the Shattered Sea, flat plains and rolling hills, with the occasional patch forest.

What most people don’t know is that it was forest once, before the First-Ones came. They gently shaped the landscape by stoking fires in the dry season and cutting timber in the wet, creating open plains for grazing cattle. These days, reindeer is a major factor in Apieria’s economy, and the Princess grazes gigantic insectoid monsters here too — some on the grass, others on the reindeer.

The plant beasts are faster than horses, and completely untiring, despite the headwind. The grey-brown of last year’s hay lies trampled underfoot, and new greens are slowly emerging.

“`You are making very good progress,`” Light hope says. “`If you make camp by nightfall and resume by sunrise, you should see it before noon tomorrow.`”

Adora puts the disk away in a dedicated canteen bag.

“Who is that?” Perfuma yells over the wind.

“Her name is Light Hope,” Adora says. “She’s… A mentor figure to She-Ra. I think she has some sinister motives, but right now she’s too useful not to work with.”

“Does she live in the forest? You seem to go visit her from the Library, right?”

“Yeah; she lives in the Crystal Castle, which is actually deep underground, under the Dagon Rock — the one with the First-Ones’ ruin?”

“I know it. So what are we doing for her?”

“I have no idea. But if we spot some wild reindeer on the way, I’m going hunting,” Adora says, and pats the Yala-Zev in its bulky holster on her hip.

* * *

“Princess, please, come in! I was wondering when you would arrive.” It’s another humanoid bug, that greets Glimmer and Juliet at the gates to Castle Honeydew.

They’ve left Bow and Seneschal on the Forth; Bow in particular is having an easy time befriending the captain.

“Do— do I just greet you here or do I wait until we’re in person?”

“As you prefer.”

The bug walks Glimmer through mantrap and across the gravel courtyard to the inner walls, through _another_ mantrap, and then across _another_ courtyard, to the innermost keep. Here and there, Glimmer spots the shadow of someone looking at her, through windows and behind doorways.

“ _What the fuck is going on?_ ” Glimmer whispers to Juliet.

“ _I don’t know, but be ready to jumps us out._ ”

“ _I call it ‘blinking’ because… Never mind why._ ”

“Just through here,” the bug says, pushing open a massive gate.

Inside is a corridor of bare stone lit by the faint light of oil lamps. They head inside. The corridor opens up into a small-ish throne room, the centerpiece of which is a throne of wrought iron with lots of pillows, whereupon sits a woman.

Tall, lithe, with dark curls, wearing a golden dress. On her hand crawls a group of green beetles.

“Princess Sweet Bee, well met,” Glimmer says.

She rises from her throne — which does _not_ reside on a podium — and smiles warmly, walking up to them. "Well met indeed, Glimmer! Last time I saw you was at the ball; I hear from my husband that your rescue was a success, and it is good to see this in person.

“I was hoping to ask candidly what you’re doing here in my kingdom?”

There’s a note of malice behind those words. “It’s the closest waygate to our destination,” Glimmer says.

“And why are you going to the Northern Reach?”

Glimmer takes a deep breath. “Sweet Bee, what the fuck is your deal?”

Sweet Bee blinks. “Pardon?”

“Dispense with decorum for a while,” Glimmer suggests, “Honeydew is like a dark caricature of other cities. Your servants and staff seems terrified of me — a simple visitor. I feel unwelcome, and as if at any time your city guard might decide to confiscate our belongings. What. Is. Going. On?!”

Sweet Bee’s smile fades instantly. “Do you really want to take that tone?”

“Honestly no, but I have a mission that must not fail, and your mysterious creepiness is an obstacle. Talk to me.”

Sweet Bee turns away, and for a moment, her true age shows. She’s in her late thirties at least. “Apieria is my creation. Honeydew is my city. Before my conquest of the peninsula and archipelagoes, this was _nothing._ Fishermen and nomad bands. I’ve lived my childhood under the thumb of one roving warlord after another.”

“So, what, your solution was to become one yourself?” Glimmer asks.

Sweet Bee shoots her a glare. "Initially yes. But I found that simple fear of force was not enough to create a stable society. Common folk are as much evil as they are good, they succumb easily to mere peer pressure.

"The trick was to become all-seeing and all-knowing in the eyes of the public. They fear me, sure, but the real effect is that they do so even if I do nothing. The mere knowledge that I _might_ be watching at any time, through the swarms, is enough to keep most everyone on the straight and narrow path of virtue.

“I am a force for order, in a sea of chaos. My people are safe and prosperous in my city; and from there I can project my power abroad, both through my vassals, and literally through sorcery extending the range of my Runestone’s power.”

She turns to Glimmer. “So. Now you know my secret; although anyone with half a brain could deduce it. Now tell me yours.”

Glimmer crosses her arms. “Were on the hunt for a First-Ones’ artifact. We have constructed a tracking spell in Brightmoon that has global reach. It would seem the Horde is after this artifact too, so we’re here hoping to pre-empt them.”

“Are they now?” Sweet Bee says. “They must be desperate. I hear the push through the Whispering Woods was a resounding failure, and that Salineas is costing them dearly in naval force they cannot afford to replace. Candila is looking to march on Dryl. And here they are, chasing after artifacts.” She giggles, with a distinctly unkind timbre. “They had every technical and logistical advantage and threw it all away because of politics and inexperienced command.”

“I have good intel that this may be Chancellor Hordak’s pet project, and that its successful completion is an instant victory condition for him,” Glimmer says.

Sweet Bee shakes her head. “There is no such thing as instant victory, only stacked decks. I was at one point inclined to join them, just to be on the winning side, but Hordak’s little diplomatic suicide was simply too perfect.”

“You may be detached from the conflict, here in your keep, but I’ve been fighting on the front-lines. I don’t care if the Horde is making mistakes or committing diplomatic suicide. People are dying.”

“That’s what people _do_ , girl. They die.”

Juliet puts a hand on Glimmer’s shoulder. The implied message is clear: _be careful now._

“Your kingdom is a prison, and your subjects its prisoners,” Glimmer says, measuredly. “And it is evident that you care for them about as much.”

“I care more than you,” Sweet Bee says with icy in her voice. “Or else you would submit to the Horde and let their scientists and engineers raise the living standard of your citizens.”

Juliet steps in front of Glimmer. “Your Majesties, you need to cease this conversation _now,_ and _walk away._ ”

“Or what?” Sweet Bee says.

Glimmer takes a deep breath and goes over to the nearby table, which has been standing fully decked and unused for the entire conversation. She picks up a bottle of wine, sealed with cork and wax.

“Let me illustrate the difference in power between us,” Glimmer says.

“Glimmer! Don’t do anything rash!” Juliet says sternly.

“Imagine this bottle is your body, and the wine your blood.”

Glimmer blinks the wine out of the bottle, and it splashes on the ground.

A moment of silence passes, and then Sweet Bee says: “Oh. _Oh!_ ” and laughs. “No — hah! — no, no. Oh sweet girl. I _know_. Do you think I would purposefully needle you if I wasn’t completely safe?”

She reaches up and runs a finger over her forehead, shearing a hidden piece of paper upon which is inscribed a glyph of illusion. Her appearance _evaporates,_ revealing another bug-person. In one smooth motion, it takes out another paper glyph and applies it, once again assuming the form of Sweet Bee.

She closes her eyes, draws a deep breath, and opens them. “I’m sorry, Princess, for so brazenly manipulating you. My commendations to your body guard — listen well to her wisdom.”

Glimmer says nothing.

“Your temper is your greates weakness. Be sure to keep it in check; rely on others if you must.”

“So was it all a lie?” Glimmer asks.

"No. I stand by my method of governance through a culture of self-policing, and that the death of one person in service of the whole of the people is a noble thing. And I do so because this philosophy is one that works for me; for my people; and for my circumstances as a ruler.

“However, I shall be remiss to preach it as the only viable method of governance. Brightmoon is no doubt a great city, and its people no doubt a great people, but their fate is yours to decide, not mine. Govern as you see fit, when you one day ascend the thorne.”

Sweet Bee walks over to the table, and picks up another bottle of wine. "Remember this well, if you take anything away from this interaction: the people in power in this world, get there through violence and trickery and naught else. You may stay in power however you please, but power comes ultimately from violence and trickery.

“And I and my husband are far more trickery than violence.”

She holds out the bottle. “For the voyage.”

Glimmer takes it, then goes up to Juliet in two quick strides, putting a hand on her shoulder, and blinking them both out.

“Ah. The passion of youth.”

“You enjoyed that too much,” Peekablue says from the corner of the room.

“I did,” Sweet Bee says. “What are you doing out of the bedroom? We were in the middle of something before these meddling youngsters interrupted us.”

Peekablye scoffs. “We were playing _cards_ and _drinking._ You’re saying it like they interrupted us in the throes of passion.”

“It was a passionate card game in the throes of day drunkenness.”

The illusion falls away, and the bug spreads its wings, flying up into the room and out a window near the ceiling. Peekablue turns and heads back up the stairs to where his wife’s real body is waiting for him.

* * *

They ride into the night, until Adora almost falls asleep in the saddle, dismount, erect the tent by light of a glowing flower, and fall asleep, almost literally.

At the first light of dawn, Perfuma wakes and exits the tent to soak up the rays, meditate, and build a small fire from oil-filled wood created by her powers, to boil water and brew tea.

Adora wakes sometime later — miltary habits be damned, and she’s ever so reaffirmed in her choice never to go into the cavalry: nothing quite like waking with a sore behind.

“Good morning,” Perfuma says.

“It’s not a good morning until I’ve had coffee,” Adora mutters.

“What’s ‘coffe?’ Is it a Horde thing?”

“It’s the best Horde thing. A berry grown in the highlands, the pit of which is fermented, roasted, ground, and infused in boiling water. It is bitter and sour and wakes you up in the morning like _nothing_ else.”

Adora looks at perfuma, who is watching the horizon intently.

“What’s up?”

“I don’t know. The morning sun is reflecting off something out there. Something moving.”

Adora rushes into the tent and finds her binoculars, then rushes back out.

“I see something,” Adora says, looking through them. “It looks like… Floating rocks?”

Adora takes out the Light Hope disc. “Ligth Hope.”

“`Yes?`” Light Hope says, her tiny likeness appearing.

“Would that out there be the Watchtower?”

“`I don't know; I cannot see that far. However, the location is consistent. What do you see?`”

“Floating rocks.”

“`The Watchtower does not hold itself aloft by structural integrity alone. If it was destroyed, it is likely parts of it might levitate.`”

“We’ll get back to you when we’re closer,” Adora says.

“Breakfast?” Perfuma asks. “I can make us some fresh fruit.”

“I’d love some of that tea of yours to dip my hardtack in,” Adora says.

So they eat, get properly dressed — not just cloaks over nightgowns — and pack up the tent and camp.

It only takes an hour on their steeds to get to the epicenter of the Watchtower. There is nothing there. The sky, however, is full of floating rubble.

“`This is unforseen,`” Light Hope says.

“So what do we do now?” Adora asks.

“`There is a core element somewhere. Find it and place this disk on it. I shall take care of the rest.`”

“Do you have an extra pair of those spyglasses?” Perfuma asks.

Adora does. They spend almost all the daylight scouring the skies, fruitlessly. Adora grills Light Hope for details, but they are infuriatingly scarce. They eat a light lunch. Adora sings a marching song. Perfuma sings a folk ballad. It is mind-numbing work; anything to pass the time.

“Oh!” Perfuma exclaims, just as the sun is cresting the horizon. “I see something!”

She points, and Adora looks with her binoculars. There, ever so high in the sky, is a glowing dot.

“How in the name of all that’s holy do we get up there?” Adora mutters. “I mean, if I had She-Ra…”

“Or if we had Glimmer…” Perfuma says.

“Damn, we could have used Glimmer right now,” Adora agrees.

They stand there, craning their necks as the sun grows low on the horizon

“With some luck, I can get us there,” Perfuma says. “Did you know some plants have seedpods that are buoyant in air?”

She takes a peach pit from her satchel — not that any of her conjurings require specific seeds, so the satchel is filled with everything from chestnuts to tiny grass seeds. Putting it in her palm, se imbues it with power, and from it grows a balloon of a veiny membrane, suspending itself in the air, tethered by a thin vine thread.

Adora pokes it. “Wait… Is that watergas?” She takes it from Perfuma and digs out her lighter. Holding it at arms length and leaning away, she puts the flame to the skin of the balloon, and true enough there’s a gout of flame.

“Oh!” Perfuma says. “Wow, that’s… interesting?”

Adora laughs, and it is not a good laugh. “Of course! _Of course!_ It’s not like the _Horde_ went over to using fucking _guyed masts_ for artillery spotters instead of watergas balloons because they were _too dangerous!_ ”

“Adora I—” Perfuma says.

Adora runs her hands over her face. “No! No, it’s fine! It’s fine. I’m fine. What coud go wrong?”

“You’re making me worried,” Perfuma says.

Adora takes a deep breath and looks skyward. “It’s our only good option. All right, we’re burning daylight. So how do we do this?”

“I was thinking of making a bigger balloon, and then one of us could fly up there…”

“Yeah,” Adora says. “Steering it is going to be right out— I’ll go up there, you stay down here. We’ll keep it on a rope, and use that to steer it with, though…” Adora rubs her chin. “But you’re not nearly heavy enough to hold on, with the winds… We’d need something heavy to anchor it to. A truck or a tank…”

“Will this do?”

Adora turns, and Perfuma has conjured a gigantic thing that looks like an entire whisper oak tree with legs instead of roots, and arms instead of branches. It must weigh upwards of ten tons, at least.

Perfuma begins working on the balloon and basket gondola, and they agree on a set of hand signals for directional movement and giving or taking slack on the tether.

Adora gets into the woven basket, suspended under a white blister full of flammable gas, and the tree releases its hold, letting it rise under buoyancy, held by a solid tether of living vine, itself carried by smaller balloons.

The Watchtower core is almost a mile up. The side-winds are relentless, and it almost looks like Perfuma is flying a kite. Adora has to shield her face to even breathe, but she gets to the appropriate altitude without issue.

The Watchtower core is a blue octahedron as tall as a man, slowly spinning on its own axis, drifting in the distance, away from Adora. From there, its a battle with the shifting winds and the fact that the core itself is moving. Frantically gesturing to Perfuma with her binoculars down below, and having the maneuvers be relayed to her with an uncomfortably long delay.

The sun goes down, leaving Perfuma in twilight, while Adora is still illuminated by the last rays of daylight. The balloon heaves one the wind, and swings in. Now or never, Adora jumps on the lip of the basket, hanging out by the uprights, and just manages to reach the core in passing with Light Hope’s disc.

It adheres like a magnet, and the Watchtower core lights up with blinding blue.

Adora frantically gestures to pull her down again, and slowly the balloon starts receding towards the ground.

The core dives towards the plains below, and the floating rocks all around — most shrouded in the darkness of dusk — light up with patterns of magic written in First-Ones’ writing, rotate ominously, and start moving towards the core.

One of them flies past Adora’s balloon, uncomfortably close; a chunk of magic rock the size of a locomotive, and about as fast.

Adora gets to witness the whole structure assembling itself, while Perfuma brings her back on solid ground. A tall, looming thing on four pillars, casting an ominous blue glow over the plains.

The tree grabs the gondola and brings it to ground. Adora hops out.

“I sure hope we didn’t make a grave mistake in reactivating this,” Adora says.

Perfuma puts a hand on her shoulder. “I don’t like it; I think we should get out of here.”


	4. Nothern Reach, Spring Landing

Adora does a sweep of the perimeter before they go, and find at the base of the Watchtower, the metal disc.

“Light Hope?”

“`Congratulations. The Watchtower has been reconstituted, and repairs can now be underway. You did very well, Adora.`”

“Yeah,” Adora says, and puts away the disc, then circles back to Perfuma.

They ride until the Watchtower is a distant blue glow on the horizon, make camp, and sleep uneasily.

They take it easier on ride back to Honeydew, spending two days on the return journey.

Perfuma teaches Adora the ballad she sang while they searched the skies. Twenty-two verses about a cruel stepmother and her two daughters, who love naught but one another; the mother favors one daughter and mistreats the other. They run away, meets a white knight who falls for and steals the mistreated daughter, and the favored daughter has to quest to get her back.

The ending verses have been lost to time.

Adora teaches Perfuma about watergas, acidgas, their reaction; about acidgas and it’s importance to fire, and how plants make it from the gas of exhalation, by way of sunlight. That is the extent of what’s taught in the military academy, about fire hazards of watergas, and suffocation in enclosed spaces.

Perfuma conjures a melon-sized balloon of two-to-one ratio by volume of watergas and acidgas, and from a safe distance, Adora shoots it with one of her pistols, which shoots a white needle-thin beam of heat.

It explodes resoundingly.

In the end, Adora never gets around to doing any hunting.

* * *

Catra enters onto the bridge of the ship, arm in a sling. The captain is a Sasquatch man, and unusually short at that, dressed in merchant fleet uniform.

“Captain,” Catra greets. “I don’t like our time-frame for making land.”

He chuckles. “There’s not a lot I can do, ma’am, unless we want to get stranded at sea without fuel. And you’re taxing the generators enough as is with the First Lady’s machines.”

Catra blinks. “Are you an actual idiot?”

“Hey!” the first mate says. A minotaur. “A little respect!”

“We have three First-Ones-tech generators aboard. Even if we run completely out of fuel, we can sail at at half-power if you turn off the space heaters. The First Lady is also done for the time being, which you would know if you asked! Now run the generator, get us to full power forwards this instant.”

The captain frowns, then turns to his engineer — a particularly ugly sea elf — and nods.

The ship lurches as the engines kick into maximum thrust, and within minutes they are doing seventeen knots.

“I have to do everything myself,” Catra says, and leaves.

* * *

Adora and Perfuma ride back into town before noon, and are immediately accosted by the city guard, asked for their identities, and given an escort to the harbor.

They arrive at pier sixteen to find a bustle of activity.

Captain Schuyler’s feliform Lieutenant is standing by, noting things in a book.

“Well met,” Adora greets her.

“We’ve stepped up the timetable, we’re sailing out tomorrow at dawn. Fortunate that you could make it,” she says.

“Normally people say hello to each other,” Adora says, and dismounts.

“That’s the Captain’s job.”

Adora and Perfuma head up the gangplank.

Bow and Seneschal are sitting on a crates, eating a lunch consisting of dark bread, reindeer cheese, and meat of same; together with a three of the ten-man crew.

“Adora! Perfuma!” Bow exclaims, and springs to his feet. He hugs Adora, and kisses Perfuma. “We’re sailing out tomorrow. Glimmer paid the captain another thousand marks, and pulled all the strings she could to get us supplies quicker.”

“Why?” Adora says.

“Because,” Glimmer says, coming down from the poopdeck, “it turns out Sweet Bee is a fucking monster.”

“What?” Perfuma says.

Glimmer waves them closer, and they huddle over in a corner.

“I went to see her as a courtesy after you two left, and… When we defeat the Horde, the next threat we should keep an eye on is Apieria. That woman is _dangerous._ ”

“Glimmer, I danced with her at the ball. She seemed _harmless,_ ” Perfuma protests.

Glimmer puts a hand on Perfuma’s shoulder. “That’s what she wants you to think. I don’t think she has a single genuine bone in her body. Anyway, I want out of here as soon as possible.”

“That also means no send-off party,” Bow adds. “Better not to set sail hung over.”

“Perfuma, I know you wanted to visit her,” Glimmer continues. “Please, just go home. I’d feel a lot safer with you back in Plumeria.”

Perfuma looks conflicted. “All right.” She puts a hand on Glimmer’s arm. “If it will make you feel better.”

“Thank you.”

* * *

They load the last of the supplies up, and by nightfall, head to the shoddy inn on the dockside where Glimmer has brought them rooms, baths, and a final hot meal cooked from fresh ingredients.

Glimmer is the only one unaccustomed to waking up before dawn. Bow and Seneschal are rangers, Perfuma always rises with the sun, and you can take Adora out of the rigid structure of the military, but you can never take the disciplined soldier out of Adora.

It’s a short walk to the pier in the bone-chilling morning air.

“Well. Good luck,” Perfuma says, by the gangplank.

They exchange a round of hugs. Glimmer’s with the mutual respect of royal peers, Adora’s with the bond of travel companions, Juliet’s with the awkwardness of unsettled social hierarchy, Seneschal’s with siblings’ love, and last Bow’s with a long slow kiss.

“Take care of yourself, my Rangers,” Perfuma says. Then she waves goodbye, and proceeds up the pier.

“Let’s go,” Adora says.

They board the ship, which is already bustling with activity.

“All right, crew!” Captain Schuyler bellows. “Our passengers are aboard! Cast off! Princess, if you will.”

Glimmer ascends the stairs to the poopdeck, and turns towards the bow; with her staff, she draws a circle in the air, and a brilliantly coloured, dazzlingly complex rune appears.

The wind picks up immediately.

“Splendid work!” Captain Schuyler yells.

Glimmer descends the stairs again. “Let’s get out of this cold.”

The journey itself is uneventful. Aboard a ship like the Forth, there’s both always something to do, and paradoxically a mind-crushing about of time to kill. Mostly by playing cards, the crew wagering chores instead of money.

Glimmer keeps up the wind spells, and augments the main room below decks with a semi-permanent light spell which illuminates far better than the hooded oil lamps.

Seneschal takes up a big share of the kitchen duties, Bow works on tuning his trackers to the local interference.

On days where the float ice is scarce, Adora and Juliet use it for target practice. Juliet gets decently competent with the lever action, and Adora switches her to one of the spare Yala-Zevs. They switch from shooting floating ice to Adora hanging off the side of the ship with a boat hook, pulling chunks aboard, breaking them up and using them for skeet.

On most days Glimmer, Adora, and Juliet sup with the Captain in the great cabin, while Bow and Seneschal prefer lunch on the deck with the crew — weather permitting.

There is precious little daylight; the red moon hangs above in the night sky, bathing the dark ocean in pale light.

Captain Schuyler prefers berthing with the crew below deck as per old Pirate habits, so Adora, Glimmer, and Juliet get to sleep in the great cabin. There’s room for Bow and Seneschal as well, but they too prefer below decks. Adora is loath to admit that she does not miss sleeping in bunks; the officer’s life has gotten to her.

It grows steadily colder. The sealskin coats and pants come out, over top heavy sweaters and woollen undergarments. On the one day they get slush, the waxed cloaks come to their right as well. The many layers keep the worst of the body odours at bay.

But the last day of journeying, everyone with facial hair is constantly picking frost out of it. Exposed cheeks turn first red and then numb, and armor plate becomes painful to touch without gloves. Glimmer and Seneschal handle the cold best. Adora, lanky as a willow tree, handles it the worst; donning multiple layers

* * *

Catra spends a lot of time in Entrapta’s makeshift lab, asking questions. It pays to know the ins and outs of the gear you bring into combat, after all.

In particular, one thing in her filing system catches Catra’s eye: the oversized Rolodex holding her assortment of data crystals has one stand out, a red semi-translucent rectangle instead of turquoise.

“What’s this one?” Catra asks.

Entrapta flips her welding visor up, and switches off her torch, then the suction. “What?”

“This data crystal, it’s different.”

“Ah! Yeah, it contains a really bad virus.”

Catra withdraws her hand and wipes it on her jacket. “Like, a disease?”

“Oh no, not a literal pathogen. It’s an infectious data entity that negatively impacts First-Ones’ tech. As a data crystal it is inert, and its contents can be accessed so long as one is careful to only look and not touch.”

“What does it do?”

“That’s… Difficult to characterize. First-Ones’ tech — the parts that aren’t purely magical, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and so on; the _special bits_ that we can’t replicate; has a pseudo-organic microstructure. This ‘virus’ causes alterations to that, causing a wide range of problems.”

“I don’t follow.”

Entrapta glides over to Catra on her tentacle arms. “First-Ones’ tech is alive. This is a disease that infects First-Ones’ tech. Symptoms are unpredictable.”

Catra blinks. “Interesting. But isn’t that dangerous?”

“Nah, as long as it’s just a data crystal, it’s mostly fine. If someone slotted it into a touch-range bump-communication module it could probably infect things just by coming into contact.”

Catra picks up a little device, not much bigger than just a slot for a data crystal. “Like this one lying not a foot away from the Rolodex?”

Entrapta frowns. “You’re right, that is unsafe.” One tentacle arm flies off and grabs a lock-box, another snatches the crystal from Catra’s hand. The crystal goes in the box, Entrapta turns the key, and hides it in her hair. “There. Safe!”

* * *

The harbor of Northumbra, the only harbor on the isle of Northern Reach is nearly inaccessible with ice still, despite spring being underway. Currents and winds have conspired to pack the entire basin with a thick drift ice.

“Assess that ice!” Captain Schuyler yells. “Cast anchor! Man the longboat!”

The crew moves as one — smoothly and with well-understood purpose. The anchor is lowered, and five men take to the longboat, lowering the small vessel down into the open water next to the Forth.

They row it over to the ice masses, and begin poking it with boat hooks, pulling chunks of ice free, and inspecting the thickness of the layer. They dig a few yards in, until it can be reasonably said the ice is as thick as it is going to be.

A foot of packed drift ice. Slightly too much for the Forth to handle.

“Captain,” Glimmer says. “I might be able to clear us a path.”

“How so, Princess?”

Glimmer takes a running start off the side of the ship and glides over to the ice sheet, flapping her wings once to arrest her momentum and come to a stop, gently hovering. She swings her staff around and calls upon the First Flame of Elm. The spiral-shaped impossibly complex rune she has spent the last few days memorizing appears before her in the air, and from it springs a jet of incredible heat and noise. Chunks of ice as big as men instantly become half melted and fully airborne, flung away from the gale-force scorching wind.

Within seconds, a path begins to form. Glimmer glides forward, keeping the jet of fire and air pointed where it will do the most, and when the spell runs out a minute later, Glimmer has cleared a hundred yards of passage just wide enough for the Forth, towards the harbor.

Glimmer spins her staff and casts the spell again. It’s easier the second time. And even easier the third.

“All right!” Captain Schuyler yells. “Get the longboat back aboard! Trim sails, we’re going in nice and slow! Navier!” He turns to his hulking navigator, a terrifying-looking sea-elf of deep-sea bloodline. “Take the wheel, I’ll direct you from the stern.”

With difficulty, they maneuver the ship into the channel Glimmer has cut in the ice, praying that the wind won’t shift and pinch them.

They make it to the long, sturdy, singular stone pier of Northumbra without much issue. Several crew members bundled up in coats, pants and boots of sealskin, hop ashore and tie the Forth down; the ice between the pier and her hull forming cushions.

Glimmer lands on deck, flush-faced, sweat dripping.

Bow and Adora come up to her. “Holy shit, Glimmer,” Bow says. “That was incredible.”

Adora takes out a clean rag and hands it to Glimmer. “Wipe yourself down before it freezes.”

“Got any water?” Glimmer asks. She pulls on her coat. “I’m sweating like a pig.”

“Princess!” the Captain calls out, descending from the stern. “Amazing work; if you’re sweating you need to go get dry immediately — it _will_ freeze.”

“Come along,” Adora says, taking Glimmer by the hand and leading her to the cabin. There, she stokes a coal fire in the stove while Glimmer undresses, already beginning to shiver. They get her dry and changed into a new set of cold-weather gear, before heading outside.

“Hey, Bow! Seneschal!” Adora calls out. Bow and Seneschal are both at the bow of the ship, scouting towards the port town. It’s quiet, but not too quiet. There’s smoke coming from some of the chimneys.

The five of them head down the gangplank, and Adora stumbles for a moment.

“Adora, what’s wrong?” Bow asks.

“I— I think She-Ra is back,” she says. She closes her eyes, and there is a flash of light. True enough, she transforms into the eight-foot tall magical warrior.

“Oh _fuck_ it’s cold!” is the first thing out of her mouth. She’s still wearing armor fit for fighting in the mere freezing of winter in Brightmoon.

Adora runs up the gangplank and back into the heated cabin. There she sits by the warm stove and calls the Aegis to her hand. She spends ten minutes revising She-Ra’s outfit to be much more cold-weather friendly, and even changing She-Ra’s physique to add more ‘padding,’ giving the Amazon’s physique a less athletic and stout look.

She re-transforms to apply the changes, and heads back outside to find the cold much less biting.

“All right, this expands our options,” Adora says, coming up to the others, who have been joined by Captain Schuyler.

“Did… Did you just pack on a few pounds?” Glimmer asks. “You look like an eight foot tall _me_ now.”

“I did,” Adora says. “Captain, good of you to join us. You haven’t been let in on the plan, have you?”

“Can’t say I have, can’t say I care, so long as my crew aren’t put in danger.”

“We’re here for a First-Ones’ artifact, a spacecraft — a kind of ship that can sail into the heavens,” Bow clarifies. “The Horde might be here too, looking for the same thing.”

Adora continues. “So, here’s what I’m thinking: Northern Reach is big, but it is not _that_ big. We don’t know exactly where Mara’s spacecraft is on it, so Bow, you get started on that right away. Do you need Glimmer’s help?”

“No, I just need time to take measurements and adjust my equipment.”

“We should go introduce ourselves,” Captain Schuyler says, point a thumb towards the town.

“Yes. And after that, I’m thinking we should do reconnaissance by air, to see if the Horde has made land elsewhere.”

“There’s not a lot of daylight left,” Schuyler says, consulting his pocket “watch. An hour, at most.”

Glimmer reaches into her coat, and takes out a necklace. On it hangs her signet ring. She hands it to Juliet. “Go be me, introduce us. Bow, Seneschal; Captain, bring someone who’s good in a scrap, if it does come to that.”

She turns to Adora. “Where to?”

“We follow the coast, going in opposite directions. It’s going to be incredibly cold up there. Stay safe. If you feel anything off, blink back to the ship _immedaitely._ ”

Glimmer nods. “Let’s get as far as we can before there’s no more light.” She starts casting spells: one for the high-altitude winds, one for the cold, one for easing breathing, and one to see better. She has put the time on the ship to use, learning spells that her and Adora have deemed the most useful.

Adora forms a full suit of flight-capable power armor; not the stealthiest thing in the world.

Glimmer takes off firs, three quick beats of her wings takes her up, where she casts the Third Flame of Elm to create a stationary ball of fire of all-surpassing heat, which bathes the others in warm glow and creates an updraft that she rides into the sky.

There, she once more casts the First Flame, but in the lesser-used variant that pushes _back._

Effortlessly she accelerates to over two hundred miles per hour of speed, following the coast to the west. The spell cuts out, and she glides on wings almost not extended at all.

Adora sees her disappear in the distance, then stands back from the others a bit. Her skirt of actuated plasma thrusters come online, and thrust builds, sending her screaming into the sky. She turns hard east.

“Let’s go,” Juliet says.

Captain Schuyler mutters: “Just a moment,” and goes back aboard. “Mina! Moe! Knives, saps, revolvers. Let’s go,” he says.

He returns stuffing a revolver down the front of his waistband, and throwing his coat over it. After him follow two minotaurs, a man and a woman.

“You take point,” Juliet says to Bow. “You’re good with people.”

“Is that your professional opinion?” Bow asks.

“It is Glimmer’s.”

Bow blinks.

* * *

The town is less a town and more a series of barracks, sturdily built. Snow lies in piles, especially on the roofs. The soldiers stationed here spends at least on fifth of their time doing naught but managing the snow and ice; dumping piles of it into the ocean to prevent it laying over summer and worsening the problem next year.

The paths between the half-buried buildings are stamped ice strewn with gravel in some places. Pinned by the ice are several ships along the pier; some for troops, others for fishing.

There’s a single guardhouse by the end of the pier, and from it emerges three white-clad soldiers with covered faces, wearing the insignia of the Kingdom of Snows — Northern Reach, despite being geographically closer to Apieria’s northern coast, is under Snows’ dominion.

“Well met, you of Snows!” Bow calls out. “We’re delegates from Brightmoon.”

“What’s a Salinean-made arctic ship doing at the Northern Reaches?” one of the soldiers say, a woman, the leader — Sergeant, perhaps; Bow isn’t sure of their rank insignias.

Bow holds out a gloved hand to him. They shake.

“What’s the last news you’ve heard?” Captain Schuyler asks.

“In fall.”

“You haven’t heard anything since fall?” Bow asks. “Damn.”

“What have we missed?”

“Oh, a _lot._ We need to talk to your superiors.”

“All right,” she says. “Stay here if you don’t mind—” she turns to one of her men. “Go fetch the Commodore.”

They wait, occasionally doing jumping jacks to stay warm, and the light of day wanes gradually to twilight. Ten tense minutes go by before anyone comes back: ten soldiers, led by a blond-haired elfin woman with her hood down.

“Well met!” she greets. “I am Commodore Neil of the Snows United Navy, and commander of this outpost. What news?”

“Show her,” Bow says to Juliet. Juliet holds up the signet ring.

“We’re here on part of the Kingdom of Brightmoon, am I correct in you not having heard news since fall?” Bow asks.

“Correct enough. We have sending spells, but those are only for use in emergencies.”

“You might want to use them today to confirm this. You’re at war with the Horde, allied with Brightmoon, Candila, Apieria, and Salineas.”

“Since when?”

“Since the Horde broke truce at the Runestone Princess’ Ball in early winter, and proceeded to launch an invasion of the Brightmoon peninsula. The Snows army helped repel the invasion, and has in concert with the Brightmoon armies been pushing towards the Hordelands.”

“So why are you here?”

“We have intel that a Horde ship is attempting a clandestine operation on the Northern Reach, aimed at obtaining a First-Ones’ artifact. We’re here to stop them.”

“And you are?”

“I am Scout Captain Bow of the Brightmoon Ranger corps, this is Lead Ranger Seneschal of the Plumerian Ranger corps, and Captain Juliet of the Brightmoon Royal Guard. This here is Captain Schuyler Vernon of the good ship Forth, our transport. With us also but not present is Princess Glimmer of Brightmoon and She-Ra the Princess of Power. They are currently out on a reconnaissance sortie.”

The Commodore looks at Bow with a level gaze. “We’re going to use one of our sendings to confirm this; if any of this is a lie, I’m arresting the lot of you and confiscating your ship.”

* * *

The sun finally passes below the horizon, and Adora begins slowing. She has covered four hundred miles of coast at least. From her altitude of a few hundred feet she can easily see into most fjords, lessening the need for detours.

It will still take days to search the island. She switches on the image intensification in her visor, and activates the sensors of her suit. Then she guns her thrusters and flies straight upwards to an altitude of almost a mile into the air. Languidly she spins in place as free-fall takes her, scanning the coastline ahead for another thirty miles. Nothing.

She engages her wings and turns the drop into a glide, pathing a course straight across the inland glacier towards Northumbra. So far, nothing. She puts the thrusters on, and accelerate.

The harbor comes into view, little faint lights dotting out the houses of the town, and the ships along the pier. It’s not late; it is just dark.

She descends and arrests her momentum as she comes up to the pier, landing on the abandoned length of stone in a suicide burn.

“Hey!” she calls up to the deck of the Forth.

The lieutenant looks over. “What?”

“Has the Princess returned yet?”

“No.”

“And the Captain?”

“Also no.”

Adora dismisses her power armor, and heads in towards the town.


	5. Snowblind, Frostbit

Adora is approached by three guards at the guard house.

“I am She-Ra, General of Brightmoon, my companions are in town, I believe?” she says, towering over them.

“Ah— yes, they went to speak with the Commodore. I’ll take you right away.”

The female Sergeant — Adora knows the rank insignias of every Alliance military by heart — leads her into town, to the main building.

“Just inside, General, ma’am.”

Adora uses the broom by the door to clear the snow off her boots, and heads inside, through an entry hall with two men on guard who are all-together too surprised to stop her, and into a lounge-area that might also double as a mess hall.

There are Bow, Juliet, Seneschal, the Captain, and two crew members, together with several Snows naval officers, and the Commodore, a fair-haired woman with a stern expression.

“There she is now,” Bow says.

The Commodore turns and sees her, showing just the faintest note of surprise. “Indeed. I must confess, even with the confirmation from up high, your story was hard to believe, ranger.”

“No Glimmer?” asks Juliet.

Adora shakes her head, and walks up to the Commodore. “Commodore, thank you for having us.”

The Commodore stands. “Welcome to Northumbra, General.”

“Pardon my imposing appearance,” Adora says, and reverts to normal. “There.”

The Commodore blinks.

“I haven’t managed to locate the Horde ship, but since the Princess haven’t returned yet, and we definitely haven’t covered the whole island, we don’t have anything definitive yet.”

There’s a knock on the door out in the entry hall.

“If it’s the Princess, let her in,” the Commodore orders.

Glimmer comes in throwing off her hood, and shaking the frost off her wings. “I found it,” she says. “They have a large ship that seems to have carved a path through the ice all the way to shore. They are doing something up on the ice — do you have a map?”

“Fetch a map of the island,” the Commodore says to one of her officers. The man hurries off and returns with a rolled-up parchment map.

Glimmer unfurls it on the table, using the cups of warm wine to hold down the edges. “Here,” she taps. “That’s where they are landing. I’m not sure where on the inland ice it is — I’m assuming they are digging for it or they would already be out of there.”

“I cannot stand for foreign incursion in Snows territory, as a matter of sovereignty; that’s the very thing my men and I are here to prevent,” the Commodore says. “Additionally as we are at war with these people, I’ll provide whatever support you might need to get them off my island.”

“We could use some good men,” Adora says. “How far is it?”

One of the officers, a male Sasquatch, looks at the map. “That’s about a hundred and twenty miles from here. It’ll take a day and a half — the dogs are well rested.”

“Wen can we leave?” Adora asks.

Another officer, a male faun, speaks up: “I’ll select the men, we can be ready in a few hours.”

“Same for me,” the first officer says.

* * *

It is pitch dark with only the red moon overhead for light, casting the snow cover in an eerie faint red glow.

The barrack town is in a tizzy. Soldiers are running back and forth with supplies for the sleighs, dog wranglers are whistling and yelling at their animals. The dogs are teamed to each sleigh in fan-formation, as the sleighs are used to patrol sea ice in winter — should one of them go through the ice, a fan team can recover the sleigh where a line team would be pulled under.

They pack arctic tents, fuel, food, munitions, and medical supplies. Adora, Glimmer, Bow, Seneschal, and Juliet get a spot on a sleigh each, accompanied by a soldier. Military sleigh doctrine is simple: if you get cold you get up and run, and don’t pet the dogs — they are working animals, and do in point of fact bite.

They get Schuyler’s crew to help unload the supplies they need: mostly Bow’s tracking tools, a small collection of spell books for Glimmer’s reference, a crate of Horde stick bombs, and two hundred spare arrows.

“Princess,” Captain Schuyler says.

“Captain?” Glimmer replies.

“Take care out there. We need you to bust up that ice so we can get back out of this forsaken harbor.”

Glimmer smirks.

“And that goes for the rest of you kids as well,” he turns to the others. “You’ve been model passengers. I’d hate to see any of you go home in a wood box.”

“Don’t call me a kid, old man,” Seneschal mutters.

“Me either,” Juliet says.

Schuyler laughs. “I’m old enough to be your father, both of you. That means I get to call you kid.”

“You could come along?” Adora suggests. “We could use someone with experience. I’m sure we can make room on a sleigh somewhere.”

“My adventuring days are behind me, girlie. You go show those Horde bastards what’s what, yeah?”

* * *

They call mush late in the evening, by the clock, but winter at these latitudes is an eternal night, so something as pedestrian as riding through the night is of little concern to the soldiers.

The thing about sleigh dogs is that they have an all-surpassing endurance. Fed pure seal blubber, they don’t need to stop, not even to nature’s call, and a clever teamster lets dogs sleep on the sleighs a few at a time. The only real limiter is how tangled the ganglines get as the dogs invariable exchange positions while running.

The sleighs are hulking constructions of wood — not mere sleds — with sheet metal runners, drawn by sixteen dogs each.

It is a terribly boring trip, seeing as there is no opportunity for conversation, and some of the soldiers don’t speak much of the southern dialects. Sleep is similarly uneasy, as one needs to wake every two hours to run and get warm again. Each sleigh is crewed by three soldiers, running the team in shifts.

The rations are disgusting, too; at least until you get cold and hungry enough, then dried blubber becomes suddenly palatable. There’s also no bathroom breaks; you piss off the side of the sleigh, and hold in the rest. If you’re thirsty, scoop up a cupful of snow — just be sure to avoid the occasional dog shit.

Snows’ sleigh companies are the most mobile troops in the world, hands down.

They cross one hundred and twenty miles of terrain in a day and a half, intentionally slowing to conserve strength for battle.

Bow is the one who calls them to halt within marching distance as day wanes. A heavy snow cloud drifts in, rendering the world pitch-dark, and dead silent. They light hooded lanterns and make base camp.

Glimmer and Adora go on another reconnaissance flight.

Glimmer has the advantage of stealth, and non-visual perception. Through her power as the Moonstone wielder, she needs merely imagine, and her mind’s eye is supplied with a perfect image of reality in terms of densities and structural integrity of all matter, and the topology of space itself. She does an earnest flyover of the Horde facilities.

Adora has the advantage of image intensified magnification optics. She uses her jet suit to climb to an altitude where neither sound nor the glow of her thrusters are visible, and takes a good long look from high above.

The Lieutenant who holds command over the sortie is a seasoned satyr gentleman; his soldiers are all armed with cap-lock revolvers, rifled breech-loaders, and sabers.

“So, what are we up against?” he asks.

“I count around thirty people there,” Glimmer says. “I don’t think all of them are soldiers.”

They have twenty-seven Snows soldiers, excluding a bare skeleton crew of four men to look after the dogs.

“The camp consists of nine buildings, laid out like so,” Adora says, drawing in the snow. “Our objective probably lies in the largest one; heat signature would suggest there’s active machinery in there. The buildings are made from corrugated sheet metal.”

“There’s no accommodations,” Glimmer adds. “It’s all equipment storage.”

“Yeah, the crew are quartering on the ship,” Adora says. “We go in taking prisoners; as Princess Glimmer said, not everyone there is a soldier.”

* * *

Catra sits huddled up against a petroleum heater in the building that houses the drill shaft. They have been here for five days, running the drill as much as is physically possible — the giant contraption has been dutifully pulling yard-and-a-half thick cylinders of ice out of the glacier. Entrapta has her engineers work in shifts and Catra isn’t actually sure how the woman manages to apparently never sleep, but she is almost always at the dig site.

Arctic operations are the worst, and it’s not the cold or the dark or having to shovel the powdery snow out of every shed all the time. It’s the people. Everyone is grumpier, less cooperative, and more prone to subordination. They make more mistakes, and paperwork with cold hands is a punishment in and off itself.

Good thing she’s promoted Lonnie to be her adjutant.

They are getting close, though. According to Entrapta’s readings, they should break through to a hollow in the ice any hour now.

There’s a groaning noise from the borehole.

“This is it,” Entrapta says, looking at a pressure gauge. “Minimal cutting resistance, we’ve hit a cavity!”

The engineer manning the drill drive shuts off the rotation, and starts retracting the drill shaft. Three men work together to dismantle the shaft as it is pulled out of the wide vertical hole.

There’s a faint but unmistakable gunshot, in the distance. Catra jumps up.

“Is something the matter?” Entrapta asks.

Catra listens intently, her ears rotating. “You didn’t hear a gunshot just now?”

“We’re all wearing hearing protection,” Entrapta says.

Catra’s ears are protected by the enhancements.

There’s another gunshot, unmistakably.

“Get that drill dismantled!” Catra says. “And get that thing down there excavated. We have company. Scorpia!”

Scorpia is already up, racking the slide on her shotgun, and topping off the tube magazine.

“Stay here, keep Entrapta safe, and make sure we get our prize.”

Catra draws her strong-side revolver, and heads out into the snowfall. The two patrolmen are standing on guard, carbines out.

“Which way did the gunshots come from?” she asks.

“Hard to say, ma’am, this snow muffles everything.”

“Both of you point to where you think you heard it,” Catra orders. “Now.”

She gets two hands pointing in slightly different directions, but it gets her rough bearings. Approaching from the east.

“Call back the patrols, tell them take cover.”

Catra pulls her white-painted sheepskin coat tighter around her, takes a white beanie out of her pocket, and stuffs her hair into it. The Magicat battle tiara she has covered in white tape. She pulls out a key and unlocks the phone box, cranks the handle, and picks up the receiver.

“ _Hello?_ ”

“Lonnie, we’re under attack. Send everyone you can spare.”

“ _Yes ma’am._ ”

She hangs up, pulls the alarm lever, and heads north in a dead run, intending to circle around.

The electrical alarm bell rings behind her.

She hears a yelp and a crack of gunfire to the east, giving her a very precise idea of the direction. It’s a Horde-made rifle too, black powder arms sound differently. There hasn’t been any of those yet.

Beyond the perimeter of the camp is darkness and snow. Catra minds the snow, useful as though it is at muffling noise it also slows. She does not mind the darkness. Hatchet in one hand, revolver in the other, her predatory instincts surface.

A gunfight breaks out. The deeper booms of black powder, and the sharper cracks of smokeless powder, sound muffled though the snow.

With her night-vision, Catra spots a pair of white-clad soldiers, creeping forward at a crouch, single-shot rifles at the ready. She slows, and circles around, coming up behind them.

She lunges, and brings down the hatchet on the left one, severing her spine — the timbre of death rattle betrays her gender. The man to her right gets a surprised utterance out; Catra has already wrenched the hatchet free, and with her bionic arm puts the duck-bill blade into his covered face. Blood stains Catra’s collar.

Immediately she turns and runs east, tracing back her footsteps in the snow.

There’s an unusual sound — a burst of machine gun fire. They only have a few light machine guns, and those sound different.

Catra crouches down, and jumps one and a half her own height in the air with her enhanced strength, getting a brief overview of the battlefield. True enough, brilliant even against the white snow, three hundred yards in the distance is She-Ra, firing a full-sized machine gun from the shoulder.

Catra lands silently.

Of course a full drum of concealable revolver, magnum or no, wasn’t going to be enough to kill her.

She heads closer, to get a better look, and finds another two-man team. Holstering her revolver and creeping up behind them, she switches the hatchet to her right, and plunges it first into the skull of one, then the claws of her bionic hand through back of the neck of the other, severing the spine.

From the vantage of a pile of snow, she spots another menace: the Brightmoon Princess.

Her left arm aches, for no reason.

However, they aren’t going in for the kill: Sparkles could easily blink in and kill everyone, but she isn’t. They are laying covering fire, and even avoiding

She crouches down and draws her replacement target-shooter from the armpit holster awkwardly sitting on the outside of her coat.

There she takes a well-aimed shot, steadied by her new, more perfect, shooting hand. The soldier — likely officer — standing next to She-Ra falls over, dead.

She cocks the hammer and takes aim at a closer target, shooting dead another enemy soldier. From this angle, none of them have good concealment.

She-Ra turns, bringing her weapon to bear, and Catra decides discretion is the better part of valor and dives for cover before the pile of snow is shredded by automatic fire.

There’s a flash of light over Catra, and a hand grabs her collar. Catra spins forcefully, windmilling her legs best as she can, and sees Sparkles jumping back to avoid getting kicked.

“I can’t blink you!” she says, perplexed.

Catra cocks the hammer on her pistol and points it at her. She disappears in a flash.

This time the ARW-PPE _works._ It’s also been redesigned as a set of braces, straps, clamps, and a heavy plate of lead on the small of the back. Heavy, irritating, and effective.

And Sparkles tried to grab her for capture. Telling. If they go the high road, she’ll go the low one. She scrambles to her feet and gets the hell out of where she is before Sparkles returns with She-Ra in tow.

She runs back to the camp, leaving an obvious trail to follow.

Stumbling, she chances a look behind her to see She-Ra stalking the trail.

_Come to mama._

She-Ra stops, raises her weapon and Catra suddenly gets busy dodging suppressive fire.

She darts in between the metal sheds, which the rebels aren’t shooting at, perhaps for fear of shooting someone inside.

There, she crouches down and jumps up, grabbing hold of the structural girders holding up the shed, and climbs onto the roof, fifteen feet off the ground. She digs out a mirror on a stick and uses it to track She-Ra’s approach. She sees She-Ra dismiss the machine gun, forming a tiara — always with the Princess shit — and drawing a side-arm of sorts that looks like a rifle buttstock without the rifle part.

Catra scoots across the roof on her back, getting a better view. She-Ra enters into the lit areas, darts for cover behind the corner of Catra’s shed, and engages in a brief exchange of fire with two soldiers over by the main shed.

Whatever that gun is, it shoots so fast you can barely hear the individual shots.

Carefully, Catra reaches under her coat tails with her right hand, for the lead-lined steel box hanging form her belt, and retrieves the device inside.

Catra rolls over backwards off the roof, and directly onto She-Ra’s back, the impact forcing the heroine to her knees. She reaches down, grabbing hold of She-Ra’s chin with her left hand, and forces her face up, and with with her other touches the touch-range bump-communicator to She-Ra’s tiara.

* * *

Glimmer blinks another pair of Horde soldiers into the middle of six Snows soldiers, netting them a sound beating and a set of cuffs each.

They’ve advanced basically to the camp, Glimmer is just about to give the order to advance in between the sheds when there’s a horrific sound. A yowling screech like metal against glass.

A chill runs down Glimmer’s spine.

“What the fuck was that?” Seneschal says.

“Nothing good,” Glimmer says.

Something tears through the northernmost shed like tissue paper, sending corrugated sheet metal and struts flying, the remains of a diesel generator is flung a hundred feet into the sky.

Through the could of snow, smoke, and debris, Glimmer sees something moving. Something big, glinting in metallic gold, silver, copper. Brilliant red, glowing circles open up like a myriad of eyes. A dozen great deformed metallic hands reach out and pull the creature’s bulk forward.

Off to the side, Catra comes running with a white-clad figure slung over her shoulders in a fireman’s carry, shooting a gun at the creature, as it tries to reach for her.

A few Horde soldiers open fire on it, one of them with a light machine gun, which gets its attention. It sends out a flurry of snaky tentacular man-sized hands and grab the three soldiers, pulling them screaming into its bulk, where one can only guess they are consumed.

“ _That’s an obtainer!_ ” Glimmer bellows. “ _Don’t let it touch you! Retreat! Retreat!_ ”

“What about the prisoners?!” the Sub-Lieutenant now in charge yells.

“Cut them loose! Every man that thing eats makes it more powerful! Bow, Seneschal! Take over!” She flares her wings, “I’ll distract it!”

She takes off, and from the air, casts the Second Flame of Elm, shooting a stream of clingy fire down at the Obtainer. It yowls again, sending everyone’s hands to their ears, and its arms reach into the sky, where Glimmer has to blink to dodge its grasp. It begins lumbering away from the sheds, only to spitefully send its hands through three of the closest ones, reducing them to rubble, as it does.

“Sub-Lieutenant! Cut the prisoners loose!” Bow says, and takes off towards the sheds. “You, you, and you, come with me,” he says, pointing out soldiers.

Seneschal grabs his hand.

“What are you doing, Scout Captain?”

“I’m going to go get She-Ra,” he says.

“No you’re not.”

“But—”

“I’ll go, see if there’s anyone who needs to be told to evacuate, and find out where that crazy cat lady went with She-Ra. You get the men to safety like the Princess said.”

Bow nods.

Seneschal nocks an arrow to his bow, and runs off.

“All right! Back to the sleighs!”

There’s a yowl of glass and metal in the distance, and Glimmer appears in a flash of light. “It’s coming right for you, I can’t keep its attention; run!” She blinks away again, and the night is lit up by the Obtainer being doused in liquid fire.

Then a dozen red eyes appear in the distance, and start closing in.

“ _Run!_ ” Bow bellows. “ _Back to the sleighs!_ ”

The sub-lieutenant fires off a flare to alert the sleigh-keeper crew that they are coming in hot.

* * *

Catra hangs by the door, looking through the crack, at the behemoth monster chasing after the rebels.

“All right, the coast is clear,” she says. “How is the extraction going?”

Scorpia turns to the bore-hole and shouts down. “ _How far are you?_ ”

Some muffled reply comes back up. Entrapta has gone down; the engineers have routed when the behemoth appeared, despite Scorpia’s efforts.

“She’s got it, she says,” Scorpia relays. “What happened out there?”

A translucent tentacle reaches out of the borehole, followed by another. The soft robotics strain themselves, and pull out of the hole first Entrapta, and ten the two other arms emerge with a disc-shaped thing, two feet thick and a fathom across.

“I used a little First-Ones’ magic to screw up She-Ra,” Catra says.

“Oh! Explain!?” Entrapta says, overhearing the conversation.

Catra keeps lookout. It’s quiet now save for the occasional metal-and-glass yowl. “That data crystal with the virus.”

“Scorpia get me that sled — But Catra I locked that data crystal away? It’s much too dangerous to use!”

“Yeah, yeah. I picked the lock. Not like it’s hard.”

“Where is it? We need to contain it — if you had touched it with the wrong hand—”

Catra turns. “Entrapta, I handle firearms and explosives every day; I can handle something I’m not supposed to touch left-handed. I kept it in a lead-lined box the whole time.”

Entrapta is visibly agitated. “But where is it now? Scorpia — you’re the only one without any First-Ones’ tech on you, you’ll need to disassemble it.”

“I don’t follow,” Scorpia says, sliding the sled over to Entrapta, who loads the enormous device onto it.

“It’s right over there by She-Ra —” Catra points to the corner where she left the hulking mass of a woman, next to the lead-lined box.

There’s an impression in the powder snow. No She-Ra.

* * *

Seneschal darts in between the sheds for cover. He looks around a corner, seeing a patrol on high alert, scouting out to the east for the Obtainer. The entire camp garrison has apparent routed except for these two.

He observes the distance carefully, visualizing the shot. Backtracking around concealment, he nocks the arrow off-center on the string, angles the bow horizontally, and shoots.

The arrow curves around the corner of the shed and hits the patrol, just out of sight, judging by the sound of a man collapsing.

He nocks another arrow, and repositions.

“No need for that,” a voice comes behind him.

He spins and levels the arrow at the speaker.

She-Ra. “She-Ra? But I thought you had been captured? We need to get to the others, they’re fighting that giant monster, they need your help!”

She-Ra steps out of cover and levels a small weapon — a piece of ergonomically shaped metal with a wand-like protrusion to point at the enemy — at the other patrolman and shoots a silent white beam of scorching heat directly at the man’s neck.

“I will do no such thing,” she says.

“What? Why?”

She looks at Seneschal like he is speaking nonsense. “Because It hungers, and I shall not deny it a meal of soldiers and a Runestone Princess?”

There’s something off about her. Seneschal steps forward and puts a hand on her shoulder. “Listen, your friends are out there—”

She bats away his hand. “I have no friends, Seneschal.”

“Have you lost your mind?!” he says, grabbing her.

There’s a sharp burning pain in his side. He stumbles back, looks down, and sees She-Ra’s weapon pointed at him. The smell of burning cloth and flesh permeate the icy air. His coat is on fire — he pats it out.

Then he looks up just in time to catch She-Ra’s fist in his face.


	6. Cat, Hurt

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: non-consensual displays of affection

There’s a noise up north, of metal ripping. Someone screams — one of the engineers must have taken refuge in a shed somewhere.

There’s a few cracks of gunfire, and then a strange quiet buzzing noise followed by nothing.

Catra counts mentally. “Everyone is dead.” More or less, but they don’t need to know that. “We need to go, now!”

Entrapta finishes tying down the generator thing, lights the headlamps, and starts pushing the sled. Scorpia and Catra opens the door.

“What is going on out there, I thought we were winning?” Scorpia asks.

“She-Ra is happening,” Catra says. “She woke up, snuck out, and is taking out our men.”

Entrapta takes hold of the front of the sled with a tentacle, and uses the other three for traction. They get into the open, and Entrapta hops on the front. Scorpia steps on the back of the sled, laying her shotgun across the handle and puts her weight into pushing.

Entrapta and Scorpia together get the sled up to speed, heading out of camp towards the path down to the ship.

Catra takes a look around, gun drawn, before running off after them.

* * *

Halfway down the sloping trail off the glacier, they encounter the reinforcements Lonnie sent.

“Abort!” Catra calls out as they pass them on the sled. “Abort mission! Abandon the camp!”

“What? Why?” Scorpia asks.

“We have what we need, don’t we, Entrapta?” Catra asks.

“Nothing back there is irreplaceable,” Entrapta replies.

“Except our guys! We can’t just leave the dead behind!” Scorpia says.

“We’ll come recover them once this all blows over,” Catra says.

Then the shooting begins behind them. Catra leans over the side of the sled with a pair of binoculars to see, and sees the men up the trail take cover where they can, and being suppressed by a weapon that fires incredibly fast.

She-Ra comes around the bend in the path, and approaches the first soldier trying desperately to stay in cover. The heroine swings about a small automatic weapon, indiscriminately hosing down the area in bullets. She draws a knife, the knife becomes a spear, and the spear goes into the soldier.

“Shit!” Catra says. “We need to get to the ship!”

The reach the icy beach, and run out of hill. Entrapta begins using her tentacles for traction, and Scorpia starts pushing as well. Catra hops off to spring ahead over the firm ice shelf, arriving at the ship well ahead.

“Get that crane moving one the double!” she yells.

The two engineers on deck manning the winch and crane get moving.

Entrapta and Scorpia arrive, just as the crane hooks come down. Entrapta reaches out for all four hooks with her tentacles and attach them simultaneously to the sled. She raises an arm and spins it overhead. “Load secure! Load secure! Lift, lift, lift!”

The winch groans, the cables tighten, and the sled rises off the ice, onto the ship.

Scorpia heads for the rope ladder, Entrapta throws a pair of tentacles up to the railing, and Catra simply jumps.

Up on deck, Lonnie and Kyle comes running. “You got here fast.”

“We’ve got She-Ra on our tail, and she’s angry,” Catra says. “Kyle!”

“Yes ma’am?”

“Run to the bridge, get us moving _now!_ ”

“Catra, what about our men on land?”

“What of them? They are all dead, now if we don’t want to share their fate, we need to move!”

“Catra!” Scorpia yells, a bit further up towards the bow, looking through binoculars. “She’s coming down to the beach!”

“Shit! Man the battle stations!”

“With who?” Lonnie asks. “We have ten soldiers left!”

“Then _get all of them!_ ” Catra hisses.

Lonnie runs off to the bridge as well, to use the ship intercom. Thirty seconds later, her voice sounds through the speakers: “ _Battle stations, battle stations, man the canons and machine guns facing land! Enemy is She-Ra, single infantry unit. All non-military crew barricade yourselves._ ”

Thirty more seconds later, Catra and Scorpia is joined by Lonnie, Kyle, Rogelio, and the ten remaining soldiers.

Seven two-man teams. Four machine guns, two one-pounder cannons, and two ammo runners. Ammunition belts are loaded, and boxes of shells are opened. “Flares!”

Two disposable launchers — metal tubes with rubber muzzle covers — are brought to bear on the deck, supported by monopod legs, and fired by foot pedals. Three-inch mortar flares sail into the sky and turn snowy night into snowy pale day.

Catra looks through her binoculars. “She’s on the beach, cannons!”

“Positive id!” Rogelio rumbles, looking through the scope on his cannon.

“Me too,” the other cannoneer says.

“Fire!” Catra yells.

There’s an ear-splitting double boom, followed by the clatter of hot heavy brass hitting the deck, ejected by the recoil.

Two plumes of snow and dirt rise out of the beach, and Catra scans it frantically. She spots a white figure darting down the beach. She-Ra is advancing, dodged the shells by running forward. The loaders insert new shells.

“Fire at will.”

Two more booms, brass clatters twice more.

“Machine guns! Long-range suppressive fire! Engage!” Catra commands.

The gunners take aim, and start firing short bursts.

Catra looks through her binoculars, and sees She-Ra take out a clear shield and continue running madly in zig-zag, faster than a horse, and more than twice as nimble.

She crosses the three-hundred yard mark.

“Hose her down!” Catra yells. Then the first enemy fire comes — small-caliber bullets impacting the reinforced railing and the shields on the emplaced weapons.

The less disciplined men — mariners, not army soldiers — duck.

“Keep firing! If she gets here we die!”

The lull in suppression gives She-Ra the opportunity to advance to about two-hundred yard, where she hunkers down behind her shield.

“Cannons! Now!”

Catra hasn’t said that before a bullet tears through one the cannoneer to Catra’s left.

“Rogelio! Down!”

Rogelio manages to turn away. A super-sonic crack pierces the air where he stood. Then yet more bullets poke holes in the cannon like skewers through cheese. The other cannon suffers a similar fate.

She-Ra weathers a wuthering hailstorm of bullets from four machine guns, and her shield is growing cracks. With mechanical precision she proceeds to put a single bullet through the water jacket of every single machine gun in sequence.

Catra’s heart sinks. “Carbines! Side arms! Against the railing! We’re about to be boarded! Kyle, Rogelio, secure Entrapta! Scorpia, Lonnie, the bridge!”

Scorpia and Lonnie have the mark-three enhancement suite; not as powerful as Catra’s mark four, but less aggressive as well. Too valuable to squander on She-Ra’s initial carnage.

Catra herself retreats from the bow, and draws her second revolver. She’ll defend the engine and rudder. And this time, without getting close and gloating.

Then She-Ra appears; sailing into the air over the railing, twisting and firing her automatic weapon, laying a spread of bullets over the men huddled behind the railing with a buzzing sound like irate insects. They cower. She-Ra lands on the deck above, a few of them shoot back, she side-steps the bullets somehow, and returns fire, another sweeping salvo that hits every mark this time.

She-Ra drops down, and calmly walks over to one of the cannons. She picks up a crate of ammo, then retreats up the starboard side of the bow, draws a side-arm, and shoots a white beam at a crate of ammo by the other cannon on backboard.

Catra ducks behind the steel crate she is using for cover. The explosion is ear-shattering. Steel debris flies everywhere, and a sizable section of railing and hull has been removed.

Then She-Ra turns towards a heavy door, leading to the sub-deck, still carrying a crate of improvised explosive.

 _She’s going to sink the ship,_ Catra thinks. She levels a revolver and takes aim at the head.

She pulls the trigger, smooth double-action. The gun gives off a slight creak from its internal mechanisms and She-Ra ducks perfectly timed for the bullet to sail over her.

Catra ducks behind cover instantly.

“ _Hey~ Catra._ ”

Catra’s blood freezes in her veins. She runs away like a scared kitten.

“ _I like your new arm. First-Ones’ tech? And your spine is different too, isn’t it? I can feel it!_ ”

Catra runs around to the backboard side of the front superstructure, kicks the wheel on the weather door, pulls it open, darts inside, closes it, and turns the wheel. She takes hold of the handrail on the stairs down, and rips them from the wall, bending them like a pretzel to bar the door.

She proceeds down the stairs and hears a strange series of ‘thunk-thunk-thunk’. She turns a corner into the lower corridor, and there’s a scream of metal tearing, followed by the sounds of wind.

“ _You can’t hide, Cat!_ ”

Catra runs as fast as she is able, which is very fast indeed. She clears knee-knockers along the way, slamming bulkhead doors behind her, and twisting the wheels until the mechanisms in the doors jam.

There’s more ‘thunk-thunk-thunk’ as She-Ra does whatever it is her gun can do to breach closed doors.

Catra closes another door and stops to notice that her hands are shaking madly.

She makes it to the workshop, and hammers on the sturdy door, in the common army shibboleth rhythm. It only occurs to her that She-Ra would know this one as well after she has done it, but the wheel turns, and the door opens.

Rogelio pulls her inside.

“What is going on out there?!” Kyle shrieks.

“She-Ra is breaking down the doors, she’s gone insane, and she’s coming for me!”

Kyle and Rogelio look at each other for _just_ a moment too long.

Catra points her revolver at Kyle, then Rogelio. “Don’t you even think about throwing me out there to save your own skin!”

They both raise their hands.

“Catra!” Entrapta says. She brandishes a lit welding torch.

Catra points her gun at Entrapta.

“You’re in the way, I need to weld the door shut.” She holds up a stick of weld filler, and flips her visor down.

Catra sheepishly stands aside, and Entrapta adjusts the gas flame, and begins sealing them in.

“So, what do we do now?” Kyle says.

“We sit tight,” Catra says. “And hopes whatever the virus is doing to her is fatal. And if she comes in here, we shoot her. Rogelio, your LMG?”

“I have it,” he rumbles.

There’s another breaching of a door, reverberating through the bulkheads.

“Get it. Entrapta, got any weapons?” Catra asks.

“Aa~h, no, I don’t fight. I can’t!”

Kyle is already returning with a lever action carbine.

There’s an ear-splitting ‘clang’ and the wall next to the door dents significantly. Then another, further deforming the wall. The third hit rips a circular hole in the wall.

Light is visible through the inch-wide hole. Then there’s a faint sound of glass shattering, and the light disappears.

A few seconds later, a bright white beam sweeps in through the hole. Rogelio roars in pain, dropping his gun and clutching the side of his face. Kyle is on him in a heartbeat. “Rogelio!”

Catra cocks the hammer on her revolver and shoots a bullet through the hole.

Another sweeping arc of white-hot fire is returned.

“Not the fabricator!” Entrapta yells. “Or the reactor! Catra, stop shooting!”

“Fuck!” Catra yells, from cover behind a workbench.

Then there’s the screech of metal being cut. Catra chances a glance and sees a knife blade being driven through metal like a saw through wood. A two foot cut through five sixteenths of mild steel completed in twenty seconds.

The knife retracts and repositions back in the hole, making another cut diagonally up. Followed by another cut in the opposite direction.

She-Ra reaches two fingers through and bends the metal tongues away with ease, then steeps through the triangular hole.

“Well, well, well, what have we here? A little workshop. Where are you, Catra?”

Her presence is beyond imposing. This is a death-dealing monster made flesh. Forty-eight soldiers dead in a half-hour long engagement.

And then she’s next to Catra.

“There you are.”

Catra twirls around from sitting and brings her revolver up, only to have it batted aside and clatter across the floor. “None of that.”

She-Ra crouches down, and Catra scoots up against the wall. In desperation she plants a kick at She-Ra’s chest, but she just catches her boot in one hand, and draws the knife, now dulled, putting its point to Catra’s throat.

“Oh, Catra. Silly little kitty.”

“Adora, please.”

“Yes. Adora. I’m your Adora, aren’t I? And you’re my Catra.”

She reaches into her coat and takes out the case with the virus crystal. “This thing? It’s the best thing that you _ever_ did for me.”

A strong hand grabs Catra’s collar, and She-Ra leans in for a kiss. Catra turns her head away, and She-Ra’s nose brushes against her ear. The enormous woman giggles. She even has Adora’s voice.

She-Ra opens the case, and takes out the crystal. “I’ll set you fee too, and then we’ll be together always.”

A strong hand grabs Catra by the neck, and she sinks her claws into it. She-Ra doesn’t even flinch, and pulls Catra away from the wall. Her other hand grabs hold of the collar on her coat and pulls down forcefully.

Catra closes her eyes. This is it. This is the end.

Then there’s a loud clang, and she’s pulled off-balance by She-Ra’s hand suddenly disappearing, her claws dragging deep gouges through flesh.

Catra opens her eyes to see Scorpia holding a sledge hammer, and She-Ra lying three feet away, dazed from the blow to her head.

Lonnie racks the slide on a shotgun, pointing it at She-Ra.

“Entrapta, how do we stop this?” Scorpia asks.

“Break the crystal!” Entrapta says. “Without the sympathetic connection to its origin, the virus can’t adapt and the affected tech can fight off the infection and return to normal!”

Scorpia scoots the crystal out onto the floor with a foot.

“Wait! It’s working! Don’t you see?” Catra says. “We got her on the ropes — you came just in time, we’re _winning._ ”

Scorpia looks down at Catra. “Catra, look at your hand.”

Catra does. There’s a gash on the left hand, bright red. The redness is spreading. She can’t feel her fingers. “It… It touched me. Fuck, Scorpia, find me a hacksaw, I need to loose this arm fast!”

“This is for you own good, Wildcat,” Scorpia says and brings the hammer down. The delicate thing shatters in one stroke.

* * *

They are huddling under an ice formation, trying as much to get out of the wind, as they are hiding from the Obtainer.

“This is it, huh?” Bow asks.

Glimmer wipes the frost-curdled blood away from under her nose. “Yeah, I’m done. If I blink again, I’ll pass out.”

“So we’re in the same boat as the others. On foot to the sleighs.”

Glimmer takes his hand, and they share a good squeeze with numb fingers.

There’s a metal-glass-yowl. The thing is getting bigger and craftier. It’s started using ambush tactics, and actually running in coordinated fashion. Almost everyone has gotten eaten.

“We can just stay put and hope it doesn’t see us,” Glimmer says.

“That thing is getting faster by the minute; who’s to say it can’t swim? Who’s to say it won’t cross the ocean?” Bow notes. “Imagine if it got to Honeydew. It has shrugged off everything we threw at it.”

“Not fourteen inch shells, though.”

“You keep saying that. I’m not sure.”

Another metal-glass—.

Bow looks at Glimmer. “That one was cut short.”

They sit with bated breath for another minute.

Nothing.

“I’m going to take a look,” Glimmer says.

Bow squeezes her hand. “Glimmer, no! It could be a trap!”

“That thing is gone, I can feel it. It’s like a weight has been lifted from my shoulder — you can’t feel that?” she asks.

“Maybe the cold is getting to you!”

“Then come with me.”

“What?” Bow asks.

“If I we _are_ going to die out here, wouldn’t you rather go with me, than sit here and freeze to death?”

Bow gets up, and then go out into the open together, Glimmer holding a light spell in her hand.

There’s no sign of the Obtainer.

“Shit!” Glimmer says. She takes off, glides a few dozen yards ahead, and lands. She bends to pick something up, and Bow catches up to her.

“She-Ra’s diadem,” she says. “That’s what became the Obtainer. Somehow. Look —” she points around them. Giant hand prints surround them in the snow. A clear trail leads away in one direction, but stops here.

Glimmer turns away from Bow and yells: “ _Hey! This is Princess Glimmer! The big monster is dead!_ ”

“We need to head back to the Horde camp,” Bow says. “Seneschal is there, he knows what happened to Adora.”

A Snows soldier approaches. “All clear?” he asks.

Glimmer holds up the diadem. “Something happened to She-Ra’s magic weapon to turn it into that monster.”

“ _All clear!_ ” he yells back the way he came.

Five more soldiers emerge.

“That’s it?” Bow asks.

“That’s it,” the soldier replies. “We’re all that’s left.”

“Shit.”

“We’re going back to the Horde camp to get the other ranger,” Glimmer says.

“No, fuck that,” the soldier says. “We’re retreating.”

“Excuse me, are you disobey—” Glimmer begins, irately. Bow puts a hand on her chest to stop her.

“That’s fine. You are?”

“Ensign Fawman.”

Bow nods. “Go back to the sleighs, wait for us. Set up camp, get some rest.”

The ensign salutes, and the six soldiers head into the snow and darkness, by the light of a single hooded lantern.

Glimmer and Bow head in the other direction, back to the Horde camp.

“You know what worries me?” Bow says.

“What?” Glimmer asks.

“That we still have that diadem. She tested it once, she can call it to her from at least a mile away. Whatever is going on, she can’t, right now.”

“So, unconscious, dead, or suppressed,” Glimmer says.

* * *

They reach the camp. It is dead quiet.

Bow is down to his last four arrows. Glimmer has recovered a little, perhaps enough for a few air-embolisms — or less fatally: snow in the lungs — but not much more.

There’s only six standing sheds, so they go around clearing each in turn. All of them empty, full of machinery.

Finally the head to the big one, teeth clenched to prevent clattering. Glimmer counts down on her fingers, and then pulls open the door. They rush in.

“Don’t shoot!” someone yells.

There’s four people huddled around a heating furnace. The furnace stands on wood boards previously strewn about to stabilize the ice floor, now put together to one coherent surface. Some of them have also been put up as walls.

Three people in padded coveralls, scarves covering their face, and Horde military insignias on the breast pocket, the last one is lying down — Seneschal.

“Seneschal!” Bow says.

He waves weakly.

“We’re prepared to surrender unconditionally,” one of the three in coveralls say — a woman. “We’re just engineers, not soldiers. Your comrade here is injured but stable.”

Bow and Glimmer join them in their little heated space. It is delightfully warm.

“What happened? Where is She-Ra?”

“ _She shot me,_ ” Seneschal croaks. “ _I lived._ ”

“That lady in the white? She went after the First Lady and the Major, down to the ship. I saw her,” one of the other engineers say.

“Shit,” Glimmer says. “Okay. We need to get Seneschal back to the sleighs, but I need to go after She-Ra.”

“ _She’s gone mad,_ ” Seneschal says. “ _Be careful._ ”

“What about you three? We don’t exactly have the means to take you prisoner,” Bow says. “Not if I’m braving it alone with a wounded man.”

“Oh, we’re coming along. The ship is leaving; I heard the horn. It’s that or freezing to death, and frankly, my loyalty to the assholes who left mere here to die ended with my last paycheck,” the woman says. “We’ll help any way we can. Let’s get a sled for Seneschal? Was that your name?”

“ _Thanks, ma’am,_ ” Seneschal says.

“No problem; he told us how to make this little shelter here, without it we’d be huddled around this heater and still freezing our butts off.”

* * *

Glimmer flies out from the camp. Casting her suite of flight spells is hard with her levels of exhaustion, but she manages on the third try. A directional light spell helps her navigate as well.

She passes by a battlefield on the trail down to the coast, a score of horde soldiers, all dead.

Gliding onto the coast, she finds small craters, and a length of sea ice riddled with bullet holes.

And out there, on the water, a Horde ship. She extinguishes her light and flies out to it.

A sweep over it reveals the deck to be deserted. The stem has seen battle, so she lands there, among the freezing corpses of ten dead men. It’s not hard to locate where She-Ra went from there, going by the broken doors.

She passes by a discarded lever-action rifle, and spends a few moments remembering how she saw Adora drill Juliet in its use. It is fully loaded. She slings it over her shoulder, and proceeds into the belly of the beast.

There’s voices arguing at the end of the hall, Glimmer proceeds with caution.

“ _No, this is fucking insane!_ ”

“ _Listen, we bring her back to Hordak, all will be forgiven._ ”

“ _And how do we do that? This ship doesn’t have a brig! We don’t have the man power to guard her at gunpoint the entire way! She used to be our friend, she’ll talk her way into concessions and kill us in our sleep!_ ”

It’s Catra, and someone Glimmer doesn’t recognize.

“ _I told you, she’s not in murder-mode anymore._ ”

“ _Yeah, and I’m telling you, if she remembers what happened because of what_ you _did to her, and she wants to kill you? I am handing her a gun before I take a bullet for your crazy ass._ ”

“ _Sergeant Lonnie I am your superior officer!_ ”

“ _We’re five guys on a ship, with a civilian crew of eleven, and an angry Princess held at gunpoint!_ ”

Glimmer chooses that moment to step around the doorjamb and into view. “Make that two angry Princesses.”

Catra is standing in the middle of the room, opposite another female Horde soldier. Princess Scorpia is sitting on a crate against the wall looking miserable. A lizard man is resting a light machine gun on its bipod on a crate, pointed at She-Ra sitting in the corner.

In another corner is Princess Entrapta of Dryl.

Catra draws a revolver and points it at Glimmer. Her aim is almost imperceptibly unsteady.

“Put your gun down,” she says.

“Or what?” Catra says.

“Or I kill everyone in the room except you.”

“Put the fucking gun down, Catra. Admit it. We’ve lost this one. Kyle, turn off the suppressor.”

Kyle reaches over and flicks the switch on the device pointed at She-Ra from across the room.

Catra pivots to point the gun at him. “Turn it back on!” she yells.

“Enough now, wildcat,” Scorpia says, dejected.

There’s tears of frustration in Catra’s eyes.

Glimmer reaches out and visualizes the little tin cups, press-fitted into all the cartridges in the revolver. Then they appear in her hand. She steps into the room, and Catra spins to her, squeezing the trigger to a resounding click.

“Looking for these?” Glimmer says and tosses the handful of primers at Catra.

Glimmer stops before Adora, and crouches down, taking out a knife and cutting her bonds. “Got you this,” she says, holding out the diadem. Adora looks away. “Come on, lets get out of here.”

Adora gets to her feet, feeling smaller than Glimmer despite the enormous difference in stature to the contrary.

They walk out of the room, and Adora spares a glance back at Catra, before turning away, pain evident on her face.

They exit the ship into open air.

“Can you fly?” Glimmer asks.

Adora nods, and the diadem leaps from her hand, onto She-Ra, forming a flight suit.

They take off towards land. It doesn’t feel like much of a victory.


	7. Forth, And Back Again

Entrapta busies herself with ship repairs, now that she can fabricate anything in mere minutes using the new power supply.

Lonnie takes stock of everything they have left over, sans crew. They aren’t even burning fuel anymore.

Kyle spends most of his time by Rogelio’s bedside, and talking to Entrapta and the doctor about a possible cybernetic eye for him, to replace the one he’s lost.

Scorpia… Scorpia integrates herself with the civilian crew, helping where she can. She tries to get through to Catra, with little to show for it.

Catra spends a lot of time sitting in a haze of smoke in her cabin, chaining cheroots with shaking hands. She gets Entrapta to take a fabricator pattern of the last carton, and replenish her stock.

She drinks herself into a stupor to get even a wink of sleep. No need to replicate that — they brought enough liqueur rations for forty eight soldiers.

This goes on for the first week, as they sail south, by a shorter route than they arrived by. Catra isn’t sure who decided to risk venturing into Apierian and Candilan waters, and doesn’t care to find out why.

Sure enough they get spotted one particularly beautiful spring day.

A warning shot goes over the bow.

On the horizon is an ironclad ship — possibly no match for a proper Horde battleship, but one good hit from its fourteen inch main cannon will render the Sunflower a smoking wreck. The captain isn’t willing to risk it.

“Catra, there’s a Candilan ironclad battleship heading for us,” Rogelio rumbles.

Catra looks up. She puts her cheroot out in the full ashtray, and drinks the rest of her neat bourbon. “Do you have a Candila flag telegraphy book? If they intend to board a civilian ship, they would be indicating.”

“They are.”

Catra nods. She gets up, and grabs her jacket. “Nice eye.”

“Thank you.” Rogelio’s eye-patch is gone, in favor of an eye with a distinct metallic sheen. The burns are healing, but will scar him permanently, and quite gruesomely — almost in a dashing fashion. Almost.

She brushes past Rogelio and heads to the stairs, down past the broken bulkhead doors, to Entrapta’s lab.

“Entrapta!” Catra calls.

“Yes? Oh hello Catra. I haven’t seen you in a few days. You smell like smoke. A lot.”

“I need a weapon that can sink a battleship in one shot. You have fifteen minutes.”

Entrapta ‘oo~hs’ and scampers over to her workstation — a holographic space full of symbols and strange geometries. She grabs some kind of typewriter keyboard and begins typing furiously. “No need. Just use a cutter beam!”

She heads to the fabricator, which sits with a full hopper of raw material. There, a large hand-held tool-cum-weapon takes form; it is connected to an immense coil of thick power cable.

Entrapta hooks the cable up to the First-Ones’ power generator, and hands the weapon to Catra.

“That dial here controls beam intensity, zero is off, higher numbers mean more intense beam. Simply point and pull the trigger.”

“What is it?”

“A tool designed for bulk thermal cutting, using coherent radiation emission.”

“In simpler terms?”

“It’s a _very bright light_ that does the same thing as a very big cutting torch. Do I need to explain cutting torches to you?”

Catra picks it up and Entrapta hooks the power supply cable up to the big generator itself.

It takes some doing, but she gets it up on deck without tripping over the unspooling wire. It is too heavy for an unaugmented person to carry.

Catra stands there, and waits. The cutter has no aiming reticle, so she’ll need to let them get close.

The sail-steam ship does indeed come close; steel plating across the wooden hull, and two great batteries of fourteen-inch muzzle-loaders on deck.

It comes within shouting range, and Catra lifts the weapon, bracing it. It is turned to maximum power, and she squeezes the trigger expecting recoil. There is none. The weapon gives a high-pitched whine, and the beam itself hisses in the air; it looks like a lightning strike, but straight — about five inches across. It is almost painful to look at, and smells like ozone.

Catra sweeps the beam across the deck, quickly first to take out the crew and any delicate targets, and then a slower sweep, taking out both the big twin-cannon turrets, and every smaller cannon for torpedo boat defense.

“Holy shit,” Catra says, and a smirk comes to her face.

She turns the weapon onto the waterline, and aims it in a single spot just above it. The steel cladding melts, the wood catches fire explosively, and a gout of smoke and flame jets out of the hull, before a gout of steam tells her she’s pierced through the hull on the other side.

Up on deck, sailors are running about; some begin firing back with small arms, so Catra does another sweep of the deck. Then she turns the weapon on the hull again, and opens up two more holes straight through.

Smoke starts rising from every opening below deck.

Sailors start throwing themselves overboard, to escape the flames. That won’t do.

Stopping the assault, Catra considers for a moment where the powder magazine might be located. She starts drilling holes through the ship at random. On the third try, she gets an explosion, but not one that tears the ship apart. The boilers.

She turns the beam on the masts, eating through the thick wood in seconds. They fall like cut timbers, rendering the ship dead in the water.

Last, she turns the beam on the cannons, melting the barrels she can see, and welding the gunhouses to their roller beds.

Catra puts the weapon down, and runs to the bridge, climbing the stairs three at a time.

“Captain! We need to go before the powder magazine explodes.”

The Captain nods, and puts the Sunflower on full ahead.

Catra smirks, as the ice breaker leaves behind the sailors in the water.

True enough the powder magazine catches, and the distant explosion is enormous.

* * *

Glimmer and Adora land a bit away from the sleighs, so as to not scare the dogs. A few of them look their way, but most of them are content to stay curled up against the cold.

Bow and Juliet are loading Seneschal from a Horde sled onto a sleigh.

“Juliet,” Glimmer says. “I’m glad you’re safe. I thought we lost you.”

Juliet stops what she’s doing for a moment, clenching her hands. Then she turns to face Glimmer. “Princess, once we arrive back at Brightmoon, I am resigning .”

“What? Why?”

“Because I routed. I abandoned my duty: protecting you.”

Glimmer steps up to Juliet. “Fuck that nonsense. I refuse to accept you resignation: your duty is to protect me from _assassins,_ not giant magical people-eating monsters. Now if you _want_ to be out of a job, please continue being a self-aggrandizing idiot, and I will happily sack you.”

“Yes’m.”

“Glimmer, be nice,” Bow says. He looks over at Adora standing to the side. “What’s with you?”

No answer.

“Do you think you could spare some starlight healing for Seneschal?”

“ _No. Don’t let her get near me, please._ ” Seneschal croaks. “ _I’m fine._ ”

“You’re not fucking fine, you stubborn idiot.”

“ _She’s the one that shot me, you dick!_ ” Seneschal croaks back, rising to his elbows and immediately falling back on the sleigh, wincing in pain.

Adora looks down at her hands, and calls the light to her. It’s but a soft glow. She shuffles over to Seneschal’s sleigh, and sits down on it.

“ _Fuck,_ ” he mutters. “ _You’re fucking scary, you know that, girl? I don’t trust you, not one bit._ ”

“That’s enough!” Glimmer says. “She’s been through something we can’t imagine; her mind was taken over by the Obtainer. She wasn’t herself.”

Adora draws a shaking breath, and puts her hands on Seneschal’s side.

“Feel any better?” Bow asks.

“ _I guess it takes the edge off._ ”

Adora removes her hands and shakes her head.

The sleighs are that much lighter for the missing men, so the return trip is marginally quicker.

Commodore Neil is understandably displeased when the expedition comes back with more than fifty percent casualties. Under assurance from the prisoners that everyone is indeed dead, and from Glimmer that the ship has taken off, she prepares an expedition by ship to salvage the Horde camp.

The hold a memorial service for the fallen. There will likely be no chance to recover the earthly remains of those few that left them behind. Not with the current snowfall.

As soon as Glimmer is well enough they make plans to get the Forth out of there. The ice mass in the harbor has somehow grown. The First Flame of Elm still serves well to clear a path. The three Horde engineers come along.

Seneschal stays bedridden the entire way back to Apieria. Adora stays silent. She spends a lot of time sitting at the bow of the ship and looking at the waves, almost wistfully.

Everyone else is quiet and frustrated. Glimmer tries to get through to Adora, with little to show for it.

“By the Ocean Goddess, what happened to you kids?” Captain Schuyler asks Bow on the third day of this sorry state of affairs.

Bow shakes his head. “It turns out what we came here for was never there in the first place, and more than twenty good soldiers of the Alliance died because of it. And something like forty or fifty Horde, some of which were civilians.”

“Aiaiaia, boy. That sounds like some ugly fighting.” Schuyler says.

Bow shrugs. “It was.”

“You don’t seem fazed.”

“I am, I just… I got the least of it. I almost feel guilty.”

Schuyler grunts in assent. He pats Bow on the shoulder, and goes on with his business.

* * *

“Adora,” Glimmer says.

Adora is sitting on her usual perch, at the bow. The weather is rapidly getting warmer as they travel south, and today is the day they all put the sealskin coats away.

Glimmer looks at her. Adora is getting the beginnings of a sunburn on her brow.

“Where’s your diadem?” Glimmer asks.

Adora holds out a hand, and for a few seconds nothing happens, then there’s a faint splash, and a streak of silver forms itself around her finger as a ring.

Then Adora takes off the ring and throws it into the ocean.

“Adora, what is going on? Talk to me! Please! Look, Catra did something to the Aegis, it turned into a giant monster, and you went a little bit crazy, so what?!”

“That’s what you don’t get, isn’t it?” Adora says quietly. Her voice is strange from disuse.

Glimmer is too surprised to have a reply.

“I didn’t go crazy. I just… It took away all the things that makes me… Makes me a good person.”

“I don’t—”

“Of _course you don’t!_ ” Adora yells. “You don’t go around worrying about ethics and morality! You never had to! I abandoned my lifelong friends on a dime because of my personal code of ethics, Glimmer!”

Glimmer puts a hand on Adora’s shoulder.

“I’ve been trying to figure out how to explain it,” Adora continues. "Imagine you’re a rifle, and you care about rifle things, like shooting and hitting your mark. And your owner is a hunter who only shoots deer, and you’re happy because he shoots you and hits his mark.

“Then one day, an evil man gets his hands on you, and uses you to shoot his brother dead, and you’re happy because he used you to shoot and hit his mark.”

“So what are you saying?” Glimmer asks.

“I liked it. When I kill a horde soldier I feel at least a little remorse. I always think: I might have known this person, and been their friend if things had gone differently,” Adora says.

“I see what you mean.”

"No, see, I feel that way because I think life is important, and nobody deserves to die just because of what army they joined. But when I was… Back there, I didn’t feel that way. They were all just obstacles to my goal. Loss of life was no longer a bad thing, any more than swatting flies.

"And it felt good. I’m _good_ at killing people, even without the Aegis. And I went after Catra because I wanted her back. I wanted her by my side again; I wanted her to help me infect every piece of First-Ones’ tech in the world. That was what I cared about then.

“I didn’t care that she had hurt me, and you, and killed Cometa. I cared that her arm and spine was made of First-Ones’ tech, and that I could force her to be with me by infecting her.”

“Adora, I’m so sorry.”

“I miss her. Catra.”

“Of course you do. You grew up together,” Glimmer says.

“She’s in a bad place.”

“Yeah. That only makes her more dangerous.”

“There’s also something else that worries me,” Adora says.

“What?”

“Why the Aegis? Why was the virus able to get to She-Ra through it? It’s a piece of First-Ones’ tech; but I can transform into She-Ra without it, and channel starlight too. It’s like the Aegis is _separate_ from She-Ra in some sense.”

“You should talk to Light Hope about it.”

“Do I dare? What if she can control me through the Aegis too?”

Glimmer doesn’t have an answer.

“We need to find Mara’s spacecraft. I need answers.”

“We need to stop the Horde from opening that portal.” Glimmer says.

Adora scoffs. “The tracker in the Hidden Library can tell us where it is, and any single waygate can get us directly into Capital, backed by anyone we damn please.”

“They might be prepared for that,” Glimmer notes.

* * *

They make port right before everyone goes insane. Catra steps off the gangplank into spring proper.

“Home sweet home, huh?” Scorpia says.

“Yeah,” Catra says.

One benefit of being mid-ranked officers is that luggage is something someone else handles for you.

They head to the military motor pool and Scorpia requisitions a naval officer car. They drive into town, to the little seedy bar with the good fried fish. At this point, the barkeep knows their order and rings it up on their tabs when they walk in.

And there by the window, sits Captain Octavia, looking about as rough as Catra and Scorpia felt a week ago out at sea.

“Hey! Captain!” Scorpia says. “Mind if we join you?”

Octavia looks up and puts down her food, wiping her hands in a napkin. She and Scorpia shake, Catra is content to just nod.

“We’re just back from an excursion in the arctic,” Scorpia says. “You?”

“I’m on extended shore leave, on account of me not having a ship to captain,” she rumbles.

Scorpia sits down across from her. “What? What happened to the Amaranth?”

“She sank, with most of my crew.”

“Shit! How?!”

Octavia takes a swig of her beer. “We were deployed in the south, as flotilla for the _Cassava_ and _Tamarillo_ task group. Flotilla Admiral gets us in to flank the Salinean column — textbook move, no criticism of his judgment — then the fucking Empress shows up.”

“Empress Mermista of Salineas? The Runestone Wielder? Isn’t the navy fitted with hull-mounted ARW fields?” Catra asks.

“Fat lot of good that does you when she just moves the ocean under you. Snapped the Amaranth clean in half. I saved who I could — nobody you know, Lieutenant. Thanks, by the way, for pulling the specialists for your little private security gig. It always sucks worse to write condolences about sailors you knew.”

Scorpia is covering her mouth. “Well, damn! Let’s have a round for the old girl.”

Catra heads to the bar to fetch their drinks. They raise their glasses.

“To the Amaranth,” Scorpia says.

“To the Amaranth,” Octavia echoes. She puts down her glass. "So while I’m stuck on land, I’ve been reading the news. The Brightmoon front has gone to shit. That whole air-force thing is in the shitter, due to the flying mountain, and the two flying Princesses. The troops on the ground have to contend not only with the Snows Princess who I hear has a body-count in the low thousands now; but the southern forest has switched up the monsters: now it’s no longer dozens of big hulking things that eat people, it’s hundreds of small nimble things that _explode._

“And Candila is marching on Dryl; the Queen there is living up to her epithet ‘iron rain,’ or so I hear. Some bean counter estimated that by weight, she dropped more steel on our lines in a week, than we’ve expended munitions in the entire war so far.”

Catra pouts.

“Yeah, bad news. We’re losing. Despite going up against armies armed with muzzle-loaders!” Octavia says, waving her arms. “Because they just bring out their magical royalty, and clean house.”

“If we’d gotten ARW out to full adoption before the Brightmoon offensive, we might have avoided _some_ casualties,” Catra says. “Shit.”

“Too little too late for the Sorcery Division, Wildcat,” Scorpia says.

“Shadow Weaver mismanaged that place from day one,” Catra notes.

The food is served, and Catra fetches the two baskets of piping hot deep-fried goodness, and another round of beers.

They huddle down and dig in. Octavia’s serving is lukewarm and half-eaten, but company stimulates the appetite.

“So, listen to this: I hear there’s a major upheaval in the works in the upper echelons of government,” Octavia says in a hushed tone.

“Do tell,” Catra says, reaching for the napkins.

"Okay, so, get this. We’re losing the war right? And the civilians, you know they like to blame someone right? You can get elected off that stuff, just blame the right people. So all the politicians they smell blood in the water, just itching for someone to point the finger at. It’s an election year too!

“Now, I’m friendly with a Vice Admiral, and I know that upper echelon military and upper echelon civil politics and upper echelon industry are always in bed together. So they are basically looking to take it out on…”

“Who?” Scorpia asks.

“The fucking _Chancellor!_ ”

“No way,” Catra says. “Are these people stupid?”

Octavia nods. “Money is the root of all idiocy.”

* * *

The solution comes from Mystacor, as it often does. The Runestone-suppression devices captured during the Battle of the Ash Corridor has made their ways to the greatest sorcerers in the Alliance, and they have succeeded.

Adora takes off the Aegis in ring form, and places it in an plain lead-lined case, closing it. She confirms her lack of connection by calling on it to produce a variety of weapons. Satisfied, she goes to sit inside a sorcerous circle that has the same effect.

Glimmer and Bow take up seats beside her.

“Light Hope,” Adora says to the metal disk.

“`Hello Adora.`”

“Light Hope, two weeks ago we had a rather harrowing encounter in the Northern Reach. How far along are the repairs related to the Watchtower?” Adora asks.

“`Still progressing. Please elaborate on this encounter.`”

“She-Ra and the Aegis was compromised. A Horde operative deployed some kind of infective First-Ones’ weapon that caused the Aegis to turn into an Obtainer, and in the process caused me to become a mind-controlled wielder of this very same weapon, which I in the moment intended to transport back to the Crystal Castle and use it to infect you, and other parts of the Cthonic First-Ones’ structures.”

A report short, neat, and to the point.

“`Worrying. I think I know what weapon you refer to. It is a 'virus' that infects the pseudo-bio-crystalline substrate of First-Ones' technology. A tool of terror, and a weapon all-together too dangerous to use. Inevitably such things will surface. How did you defeat it?`”

“Smashing the data crystal from which it originated.”

“`Interesting.`”

“Now my question is this: I understand that the Aegis would be affected, but why was She-Ra affected?”

“`That... I am not at liberty to discuss.`”

“Destiny business.”

“`Yes.`”

“Light Hope, do you know where Mara’s ship is located?”

“`I do not.`”

“Then that is all.”

Light Hope’s form vanishes, and Adora breathes easier.

“That wasn’t so bad,” Bow says.

“No, but now I _really_ need some answers,” Adora says.


	8. It is Dangerous to Go Alone, Take This

Preparing for an expedition into the desert takes time. Much like an expedition to the arctic: the arctic is accessible by ship, which means whatever you need you can pack. The desert has ships too, but they are ungulate in nature, have lumps on their backs, and generally have carrying capacities measured in pounds, not tons. Packing lighter balances out with packing smarter.

The Crimson Wastes are largely _terra inognita,_ situated between Apieria and everything else — the Narrow Sea, Candila, and Dryl. What goes on in that massive wasteland is largely up for speculation; in part due to its sheer size, in part due to its inhospitality.

The southern, more habitable parts, were home to the Minotaur clans, now placated by the political marriage of their king to Candila’s Queen Peftasteri. The coastal stretch with the Narrow Sea are lawless lands of smugglers’ harbors and pirate dens, in between fishing villages paying protection rackets.

The unclaimed barrier mountains south of the Apierian peaks at the crook of the Shattered Sea, the very range that drinks the rain intended for the western Wastes, are something of a breadbasket of the entire land, with rainfall and temperature optimal for rice terraces. Many a mercenary ends up there, taking work as protection for the price-gouging farmers; the difficult terrain impeding advances from the desert.

Point is, it’s not so simple as just waltzing up with a chest of silver marks and buying whatever you need. That’s a good way to get mugged, which in the case of Glimmer, Adora, Bow, Juliet, and _possibly_ a few additional rangers, would result in horrific bloodshed.

Before they leave, there is business to attend to.

Glimmer arrives at the ornate building in the aristocratic quarters, formerly the domicile of some duke or other; to find a bustle of activity. Carts are being loaded, workmen are running to and fro, and a few men and women in finery are conversing animatedly about nothing good. As the head diplomate for Brightmoon, it seems natural that she’d be the one to do this, but already now, doubts are growing in her mind.

“Hello?” Glimmer says, approaching.

“Ah, the Princess herself, what can I do for you?” one of them says. A man with slicked hair and spectacles.

“This is the Hordelands embassy, right?”

“No. Not anymore. We’ve been called back to the homeland; diplomatic relations with all Alliance nations are to cease effective immediately.”

“Oh,” Glimmer says. “Why?”

He shrugs. “Nobody tells us anything right now, your highness.”

“When you do return, could you see to it that these are delivered?” Glimmer says and hands him three heavy envelopes.

“What’s this?”

“Official mail. During a recent excursion to the Northern Reach, Brightmoon rescued three Horde civilian military contractors, who had been left for dead. They have taken up residence within Alliance territories as war refugees; this is letters addressed to their next of kin et cetera.”

The man smiles widely. “Of course, Princess; I shall see to it personally. Not like I have much of a job to do at home.”

* * *

There’s a hammering on Catra’s door. She’s wide-awake in a heartbeat, hand on her nightstand gun. She hops out of bed, and ambles sideways through the narrow apartment. Scorpia emerges from the bedroom. “ _Who is it?_ ” she whispers.

Catra gingerly looks through the peep hole. Outside are _ten_ Special Services officers. “ _It’s the MP,_ ” Catra whispers back. She flicks on the light.

Scorpia disappears into the bedroom and returns with trousers, blouses, and her gloves.

“One moment!” Catra yells through the door. Scorpia tosses her a pair of trousers. “We’re getting decent!”

Scorpia slides the blouse over her head and gives Catra a thumbs up.

Catra opens the door with the chain on. “What can I do for you?”

“Major Catra.” The woman by the door is a towering minotaur. “This is a warrant for your arrest.” She tosses a document through the door. Catra hands it to Scorpia, who unfurls it and skims it. “This is legit.”

“Shit,” Catra says. She hands her gun to Scorpia, and turns to the door. “I’ll come quietly, but if you’re taking me somewhere remote to shoot me, I’ll kill all of you.”

“Ma’am, the Chancellor himself is waiting to interrogate you.”

Catra’s hair stands on end. “Let me get my jacket.”

They take her down to the street, and into a car with dark windows. It’s a long and tense drive, and they end up at some kind of warehouse in an industrial district. There’s not a soul around — Catra’s sensitive ears inform her.

“This still looks like some place I should expect an execution,” she says. “And you haven’t cuffed me.”

“Shut up. The Chancellor is concerned for his safety.”

They lead her through a side door. Inside, there are pools of water on the concrete floor, where the roof has leaked. In the center of the room sits… An office. An electrical line hanging from the ceiling provides power for lights and telephone lines.

By the desk sits Chancellor Hordak in shirt sleeves, wearing an armpit holster with — Catra squints — some kind of competition-shooting gun in it. Wrapped around the metal shade of the desk lamp is wrapped a furry snake Catra doesn’t recognize.

In front of the desk is a single chair.

“Major Catra, as you requested,” the minotaur says.

“Chancellor,” Catra greets.

“Sit.”

She does.

To his credit, Hordak puts the pen down immediately. “Pardon the lack of creature comforts, I’m concerned about assassins.”

“Do you need me to do something about that?” Catra suggests.

“You’ve done quite enough, Major.” His speech is measured but he looks directly at Catra with surprising malice. He returns his attention to the paperwork in front of him. “You’re about to be taken to court martial. There you will be convicted of fraternizing with the enemy—”

“What?!” Catra protests.

Hordak slams his hand on the desk, and Catra jumps in her seat.

“ _Fraternizing with the enemy,_ gross negligence of officer’s duty, betrayal of your command, and unlawful naval belligerence.”

“Chancellor I—”

He grabs his coffee cup and hurls it at Catra; it shatters against her bionic arm.

Hordak sighs, and takes out his handkerchief to wipe up the coffee spill on his table. “I apologize; that was inappropriate of me. I am under some stress.”

Catra bites her lip.

“You will be convicted and sentenced to deportation to Beast Island.”

Catra’s eyes go wide. “Chancellor that’s a death sentence, surely—” Hordak snaps his pen in half. Catra shuts up _fast._

“This is what is _going to happen,_ and I can assure you that you are not going to worm your way out of the consequences of your actions this time. As of four hours ago I have been promoted to supreme commander of the joint armed forces. By tomorrow I will be elected unilateral head of state and legislature. My power is absolute. You _cannot_ win.”

Catra doesn’t dare make eye-contact.

“I want you to understand, Major, not just _what_ is going to happen, but _why._ And I don’t want you to understand for _your_ sake. I merely take no pleasure in punishing the ignorant. Look at me when I’m talking to you.”

Catra makes eye contact.

“Did I not _specifically_ ask you to keep my wife safe?”

Before Catra can answer, he repeats: “ _Did I not?!_ ”. The sound of his voice echoes in the large room.

“Y— You did, sir,” Catra says.

"Instead, you stole a dangerous First-Ones’ artifact, and in your vendetta against your defecting former squad mate, you put the entire mission at risk — you put my wife in _mortal danger._

“That you squander your men and materiel like so much disposable tissue paper is merely distasteful to me—”

“Sir, in my defence, I take on the most dangerous enemies we—”

“ _Stop costing me money, Catra!_ ” he yells. Again it echoes. “Sorry. As I was about to say: you are a _loveless fool,_ who cannot _ever_ understand the bond Entrapta and I share and who will _always and only ever_ work for your own gain at the expense of those around you.”

He rises and walks around the desk, pointedly removing the protective barrier between them.

“Entrapta, I value her more than life itself. And you have earned my most severe rebuke in endangering her. Do you understand?”

Catra nods.

“I want you to know that I would be content to let you die on Beast Island, or even let slip and order to have you tied to a rock and thrown overboard on the way there. However…”

Hordak leans back against the table. “You have someone on your side, to whom I lend credence of opinion. Entrapta thinks highly of you, for your risk taking, adaptability, and your ability to prioritize the mission. She has convinced me to spare you.”

Catra draws a shaky breath. “Thank you, Chancellor.”

“Don’t thank me. You have a track record of skill at retrieving First-Ones’ artifacts. Whether due to dumb luck, or genuine craftiness, I know not. After your sentencing, you will be assisted in covertly escaping custody, and transported to the Crimson Wastes.”

“What?”

“There’s an object there which Entrapta wishes to obtain — a scientific curiosity at worst, something valuable to the war effort at best. Capture it and transport it back, and I shall see you pardoned.”

Catra feels very small in this moment. “Do I—”

“I want to emphasizes here, I’m still sending you away to die; just in a way that makes my wife happy. I do not have details, because I do not care for them.” He waves to his guards. “Take her away.”

* * *

It’s a waygate trip to Candila. They are greeted cordially in the waygate vestibule, but Glimmer has written ahead, so there is no trouble. They are escorted to the palace gates by the Candilan royal guard — as a matter of courtesy. Meteora keeps the palace, while her elder sister is out campaigning.

Adora peels off to pay her respects to Cometa in the crypt.

There, she bids the guard escorting her to let her be alone to pay respects, and she obliges.

“Hey,” Adora says to the tomb; a white slab of marble, with quite and accurate bas-relief of Cometa’s likeness chiseled into it. "I hope you’re well, where ever you are now. Not that I believe in any afterlife, just… That’s what people say, right? I guess this is as much something I say to myself as to you.

“We could use you, right now. All the others are out waging wars; it’s just me and Glimmer, throwing about our weight, trying to… Well, heading out now we’re going to get some answers about this She-Ra business. We had a close call up North.”

It’s always a little bit awkward. Adora closes her eyes and transforms. “There’s one thing though. I’m going to need my shield back. I— I hope you don’t mind.”

Checking the entrance to the crypt, to see that the guardswoman is indeed outside earshot, Adora goes up to the marble slab. Lifting it is a fools errand, it weights over a thousand pounds, and it would surely crack.

Instead, Adora fetches a First-Ones’ breaching tool from her belt — the expensive espionage kind, not the tactical kind — and attaches it to the marble. The small device spins up and creates a very short range portal, that goes directly through the stone.

Adora steps in an plucks her shield from beside the stone coffin, where it rests next to Cometa’s own. Why Cometa put more effort into She-Ra’s shield than her own, Adora will never know.

She slings it on her back, where the back mount in She-Ra’s armor grabs hold of it. She reaches to her belt and opens the small compartment where she keeps the Aegis, breaking the suppression field, and opens the interface; in which Adora designates the shield as ‘She-Ra only.’ Contrary to most of the rest of her kit, it is too heavy for use as Adora. She reverts, and the shield vanishes with She-Ra.

She deactivates the breacher, and the marble slab is completely untouched.

* * *

Candila’s capital, The City of Red Iron, lies on a great river that runs into the narrow sea, red-dark with ochre-rich, fertile mud. Its walls are tall plates of metal alone, erect in ages past by early wielders of the Flame Core and moved by their successors whenever the city outgrew them.

It is beautiful and to people who have spent most of their life in the temperate climates of the Brightmoon peninsula, exotic. The warm climate lends itself to a diversity of dress, the prosperity of the city’s industry and trade, to a diversity of peoples, and especially when they pass through the markets, a diversity of wares.

This is a great place to buy supplies indeed, but they have yet a ways to go before they set into the Crimson Wastes. They’ve done some light shopping, mostly for desert-appropriate garb — cheaper to do here, far from the desert, than suffer the markup of proximity — and have taken lunch at a permanent food stall, with seating. A hearty, spicy stew, with crisp flatbread, and strong tea.

“So, where _do_ we go next,” Adora asks. “The Wastes are north, right?”

“Well yeah,” Bow says. “But it is quicker and safer to go up the coast. There’s a mid-sized city there. Salineas has some nominal presence up the coast, so there’s smugglers running through the desert.”

“How do you know all this?”

“Local ranger chapter. Well, they call themselves Stalkers.”

“Oh. They have those here?”

“Yeah. They use guns, though.” Bow grimaces.

Glimmer and Juliet returns to them. “Okay, I’ve secured us passage on a river barge. From the coast we should be able to secure passage on a ship up the coast”

They really are just four people out. Seneschal is not only recovering from his abdominal wound, but is thoroughly afraid of Adora. There’s no-one else really fool-hardy enough to go with them into the Wastes; nobody useful who has time either. Glimmer is the only Runestone Wielder not directly involved in the war effort.

Raiding Light Hope’s arsenal has netted them truly unfathomable firepower: a week of hard drilling and everyone is armed and trained. In the heat of the desert, no armor is comfortable, so Adora has generously supplied them with a true marvel of First-Ones’ tech: under-clothes wearable armor, so thin, slim-fitting, and comfortable that it feels like wearing nothing at all. Self-cleaning, temperature-regulating, and in all senses of the world, the perfect article of clothing.

They head to the riverside. The barge is a coal transport; dusted in fine black all over. The skipper and boiler-keeper are the whole of the crew, two minotaur men, as dirty as their boat.

It takes a half day to reach the coast, along lush and green river banks, and through cities separated from the flow of the river by flood-walls. The delta that once lay at the mouth of the river has dried up long ago, when Candilan generations of yore dug the river bed deep enough to use for ship transport from the sea, up to the capital.

“Adora, can I ask you something?” Juliet asks. They’re both at the bow of the barge, passing the time by admiring the scenery.

“Go ahead.”

“What are your intentions towards Glimmer?”

“Pardon?”

“I mean long term. Your ongoing romance.”

“I—” Adora blushes. “I haven’t really given it much thought. Maybe when the war is over… I don’t know.”

Juliet nods.

“Why?”

“I’m just trying to keep her safe. She’s a good kid.”

“Kid? She’s twenty years old.” Adora says. “How old are you again?”

“Thirty-nine.”

Adora makes wide eyes. “But you look—”

“Younger, yeah. I’m of a rare bloodline.” She flicks her pointed ears. “We age slower than baseline humans.”

“You don’t even _act_ older than us,” Adora notes.

“People act old because they feel old,” she says. “And to answer your previous question; I need to know how deep your relationship with Glimmer runs, so I know if she’ll do something stupid and get herself in danger because of you. One princess is already dead because she tried to save you.”

Adora looks away. That remark stings.

“Beg pardon my candor,” Juliet adds.

“This conversation is over,” Adora says. “Glimmer was my _friend_ before we started dating. Even if we weren’t together, we’d do something stupid for one another. Bet on that. And Bow too.”

Adora walks away, heading to the stern, leaving Juliet behind.

She comes up to Bow and Glimmer, Glimmer is comforting Bow, with a hand on his shoulder. He doesn’t show much, but he looks troubled.

“Hey, what’s up?” Adora asks.

“Heartbreak,” Glimmer says.

“Oh. Condolences.”

“Perfuma broke up with me. Like, the day we left,” Bow says.

Adora puts a hand on his other shoulder. “That’s so sudden, you two were on cloud nine before we went up north?”

Bow nods. “It _is_ sudden. When we came home with Seneschal, she seemed fine — shocked, but fine.”

“How is he?” Adora asks quietly.

“He’s going to make a full recovery,” Glimmer interjects.

“I guess now that you’re both here, I should just tell the whole story,” Bow says. “It was ereyesterday, and I was gearing up to head to Brightmoon. She came to the Library, and I knew something was up. She told me she needed space.”

Glimmer pulls in air through her teeth. She’s read romance novels.

Adora doesn’t. She hasn’t. Ever.

“Did she tell you why?” Adora asks.

“I thought it was because of Seneschal, but she told me she went and talked to Queen Sweet Bee.”

“I _told_ her not to,” Glimmer mutters.

“And she ended up talking to Prince Peekablue, just pleasant small talk, really. She says he revealed some private truths, says since he’s a seer, he likes to ‘even the playing field’ with his friends. They also talked about romance, and he recited a poem about Sweet Bee or something.”

Bow sighs.

“Is that supposed to be significant?” Adora asks.

“No! That’s the thing. It was just a conversation, but Perfuma said it stuck with her, and she started thinking _a lot,_ and she had a whole two weeks to think about it, too. So the reason she’s breaking up with me is that she’s realized she’s… Not into men.”

“Oh no,” Glimmer says. “So you’re worried you put her off.”

“Well, no. She was pretty big on the whole ‘it’s not you it’s me’ part. Called me wonderful, sweet, kind… Good in bed.” He says the last part with an ironic snicker.

Glimmer groans and slaps him on the shoulder.

“Sorry to hear it,” Adora says.

“Good thing she got it out of the way,” Glimmer says. “Instead of saying ‘let’s talk when you get back’ or something.”

“Why?” Adora asks.

“Because that’s how it goes in tragedies,” Glimmer says. “Someone goes off to face danger, while someone waits with a dramatic conversation back home? They aren’t coming back alive.”

Adora nods. “I don’t understand.”

“In retrospect,” Bow says, snickering. “I mean, I’m not superstitious — but, man Seneschal? He was tempting fate. Like _really_ tempting it.”

Glimmer puffs out her chest. “I have a wife and children,” she says imitating Seneschal’s accent. “Hang my corpse if you must!”

Bow laughs.

Adora just looks at Glimmer, smiling.


	9. Catra, Defeated

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: grevious bodily harm

Catra doesn’t get to make a phone call; there’s no bail to post either. She spends one night in a crummy detention cell with piss-stained concrete walls and a hard bench to sleep on.

Next morning she’s dragged off to a court appearance, where she gets to sit in a small courtroom with a judge, two lawyers, and an MP officer. The prosecutor merely puts forward the evidence as is: paper trails and sworn testimonies. Her defendant pleads guilty while the MP looks intently at Catra, hand on his side arm.

The judge hands down the sentence of exile to Beast Island without so much as blinking.

Catra quietly puts all of these people on her shit list.

She’s escorted out of the courtroom, into a police car, and driven to a high security prison — the same one Shadow Weaver escaped from. Past gates in chain-link fence, between guard towers with machine gun emplacements, and into the bowel of the beast that is the main building; all metal panelling over brick, and bars over the windows in the eastern wing, none in the administrative western wing.

Then there’s a bureaucrat, who confiscates Catra’s clothes — in as much as she had time to get dressed at one in the morning. She’s given a jumpsuit, and an inmate’s handbook — bound together with string; no spine, and led to the infirmary.

A disinterested doctor gives her a physical exam that amounts to her grumbling about how there’s no way to note down that Catra has an artificial limb. Her blood pressure is a little high.

Two wardens lead her to a four-bunk cell, and shove her through the door.

Bare brick walls, two bunk beds, and a table bolted to the floor. Two foot-lockers at the end of each of the beds.

There’s three others in the cell, all feliform women.

“Hey! New blood!” one of them says; by the social dynamic on display, clearly the superior; she’s tall, piebald, orange-eyed and is missing a canine. Her hair is buzzed short.

The other two is a woman old enough to be Catra’s grandmother, grey in her dark brown fur, and a gray-furred girl in pigtails who can’t be a day older than seventeen.

“I’m Coalpaw,” the piebald. “This is Kit —” the kid “— and Bastet,” she points at the old woman.

“Catra,” Catra presents herself. “My bunk?”

Coalpaw points to one of the top ones. “That one.”

Catra throws her handbook into the open empty footlocker, and hops up, lying down.

“Tired much?” Coalpaw asks.

“Let the girl sleep,” Bastet says.

“No, I wanna know; what are you in for Catra?”

Catra turns over to face the wall.

“Is it murder?”

“It’s none of your fucking business, Coalpaw,” Catra mutters and turns her back to the room.

* * *

Catra is woken by the lunch call, and her three cell-mates file out into the hallway to head to the mess; Catra follows, hungry.

There’s more bolted down tables, and by them bolted down benches. None of the surfaces are really clean, and there’s a strange rancid smell in the air. Everyone is wearing some variation of khaki jumpsuit; some with arms tied around waists, showing off the identical white undershirts and bralettes that everyone is issued with.

It’s also both the image of every mess hall Catra has ever seen in the military, and in every way the opposite. There is no fear of the watchful eye of the Mess Officer, and no thought given to the enforced conformity of the service. The wardens are solely there to maintain order, not decorum. Individual expression strains at the bonds of the inmate uniforms, instead of being willfully suppressed for inspections.

Most of these people are also unfit for duty in one way or another, besides the whole ‘criminal’ thing.

Catra goes to the food line, and stands between a large minotaur and a fat

“C’mere,” Coalpaw says, and leads Catra to a table, seated entirely in feliform women.

“Fresh meat!” one of them says. A girl even smaller in stature than Catra, grey of fur and hair, drab eyes, and a prominent facial scar.

“Shut up,” the leader says. She’s an older woman, with the rare calico fur, heterochromatic eyes in red and green. Her hair is greying, but unmistakably she would have been nothing less than the most exotic of beauties in her youth. She carries herself like the generals who _deserve_ their title. “What’s your name, girl?”

“Catra. And I’m not a girl.”

“I know a girl when I see one. I’m Leijon. Welcome to the Clowder.”

Catra snickers. “What, you’re inducting me into some sort of gang?”

“I’ll level with you, girl,” Leijon says. “You’re never getting through your sentence alive without help. Here, we’re of the same kin; we trace our bloodlines back to the Magicat empire. We help each other out — safety in numbers. No-one else here wants catgirls in their gangs.”

“Join you or die?” Catra says. “Magicat empire? Respectfully, ma’am, there isn’t a woman in this jail I can’t kill with my bare hands; and I’m a fucking proud member of the very military that once _crushed_ the Magicats. So, thanks, but no thanks.”

“Ey, c’mon—” Coalpaw says.

“And Coalpaw, to answer your question: I’m here for _war crimes._ I’ve personally killed more people than most of you have ever met.”

Catra stands up with her tray, and goes to walk away. Leijon puts a hand on her shoulder. “Girl, don’t do this. I know how you feel — your life isn’t over, here. You can get out of here one day.”

Catra turns to face Leijon and steps close. In a whisper she says: “ _I’ve not been sentenced to jail, old woman. I’m here until the next ship to Beast Island. And even if I was, I’ll be dead in twenty years._ ”

She goes to sit and eat alone. Everyone notices.

* * *

The prison yard is a miserable place. Concrete, fenced off sections, bolted-down benches, a soccer court, and a set of stationary body-weight-exercise equipment. The spring sun beats down from above.

Catra sits against one wants nothing more than to have a smoke and a drink. She’s not enough of a card shark to win any, and nobody’s arm-wrestling for any.

“Hey, lone kitten.”

Catra looks up at a sea elf. A massive woman with frilly cheeks, blue skin, and sharp teeth.

“Fuck off.”

“Naw. Don’t you know that kittens like yourself should be under Leijon’s protection? Otherwise something _bad_ might happen.”

“Listen,” Catra says. “If you’re going to shiv me, get on with it. Threatening people only works on someone who has something left to lose.”

“Oh boo-hoo.” The sea elf knees down. “You don’t mean to tell me you’re some _bwig tuff wion_.”

Catra rises smoothly up and grabs her by the frills, pulling her face to within an inch of Catra’s. “Listen fish breath: shiv me, or go stink up someplace else.”

There’s no shiv. Just a fist. Catra takes it to the face, flinching only to lead the blow away from her nose. Then there’s another, and she turns her head to take the blow to her pate; then bring up her arms to weather the rain of blows. The woman has no form or finesse, and Catra lets her go to town on her defences, unharmed.

Within a half minute the wardens are on the them, pulling them apart. The batons come out; and Catra backs off arms above her head. “She started it!” The uniformed officers cuff the other woman.

“You just earned yourself a stint in solitary!” one of them says. “And _you,_ ” she says to Catra. “Don’t get into anymore trouble.”

Catra nods. They take the idiot away. Catra scans the yard, and locates a group of sea elves, looking her way, looking displeased and disappointed. No doubt the rest of the gang. Catra strolls up to them, hands in her pockets.

“Was that your friend?” Catra asks.

“And what if it was?” a shark-toothed woman says.

Catra vaults over the picnic table, and grabs her by the collar, pulling her effortlessly over the backrest, and onto the ground. “Don’t ever send your shitty underlings after me, ever again.”

“Wasn’t planning on it,” she says, smiling. “Say hi to her in solitary, would you?”

The wardens are already closing in.

Catra pulls the shark to her feet, and brushes off her jumpsuit. “So very sorry about that outburst,” she says. She turns to the wardens and gives a friendly wave. They resolve to stand by and watch.

“Oh, no trouble. You’re a lot stronger than you look.”

“Yes. Which is why you now work for me,” Catra says.

The shark woman laughs. “I’m sorry, what?”

Catra tilts her head. “Did you not understand? Look, it’s not going to be for very long, but you pissed me off, and I’d rather spend this time being pampered by you idiots than in solitary.”

Her expression falls. “All right. Kill this bitch.”

Catra brings her hand up for a lightning-quick throat strike, snapping hyoid and pulverizing larynx

One of the goons behind Catra puts a hand on her shoulder, and Catra spins smartly towards it turning just in time to deflect a shiv to her kidney. She steps within the bigger woman’s space. Unfurling her claws, Catra lays four gashes into the woman’s front-side, cutting deep through belly flesh, and gouging ribs — her right hand really is weaker now.

Another assailant is on Catra in an instant, a slender red-skinned one with spines and stripes. Dragon fish. Another shiv, too. She’s fast, but Catra is so much faster; she dodges the clumsy knife-work, and grabs hold of the woman’s head with both clawed hands, bringing her knee up with bone-crushing force, her claws ripping flesh clean from the skull as the dragon fish flies back.

Six warden officers approach, clubs drawn, two with guns.

“Hands up!”

Catra turns, holding her bloodied hands up, dropping the two handfuls of gore.

* * *

They put her in Special Solitary Confinement — a bit down the hall from the cell Shadow Weaver used to occupy. They are none too kind about it either; escorting her at gunpoint the whole way.

One inside the cell, a sudden sensation of weakness comes over Catra. Whatever defences are woven into the walls against sorcery, is impeding her enhancements. Above all else, she’s tired. So very tired.

She collapses on the hard bed, and falls asleep almost immediately.

An indeterminable span of time later, she wakes up, to a tray of cold food sitting in the mantrap. Hunger has reasserted itself, and she eats the bland gruel, limp boiled vegetables, and mystery meatballs with more gusto than they have any right to warrant. She quenches her thirst from the tap in the sink next to the toilet.

Hunger sated, she crawls back into bed, and falls asleep again.

She’s woken up by knocking on the glass of the cell.

“Catra.”

She blinks, and rubs her eyes, sitting up. Her fur feels grimy against her underclothes. Her jumpsuit is fine, but then such things are designed for extended wear. Catra looks outside the cell. An older feliform woman in warden uniform is standing there, holding a package under her arm, with a black leather bag hanging from her shoulder.

“I’m Senior Warden—”

“I don’t care who you are. What do you want?”

“— Felicia. I’m here to inform you that you’re being charged with double manslaughter, and one count of aggravated battery.”

Catra nods. “What time is it?”

“Five in the afternoon. Ms. Reef and Ms. Undertow both expired in the night.”

Catra nods again.

“Ma’am, do you realize the severity of your situation? You’re going to serve your sentence in solitary confinement—”

“Did you not get the memo? I’m not staying here; I’ve been sentenced to exile on Beast Island; I’m only here until the next ship there leaves.”

The senior warden smiles. “I really should have bothered to read that inch thick legal file of yours, shouldn’t I?”

Catra tenses. “Aren’t we supposed to evacuate immediately?” Catra asks.

“Oh, no need to rush. That fire is in a distant part of the building.” She tosses the package and her bag into the mantrap. “Open this, flush the paper, put on the clothes, and put your jumpsuit in the bag. There’s a talisman in there too, you’re supposed to put that on.”

The mantrap cycles, and Catra rushes in to get the package. This is it: this is the escape plan.

Rather than get out of her jumpsuit properly, she rends it with her claws and stuffs the remains in the bag. The package paper is similarly torn to shreds, and Catra immediately starts putting on the jacket, pants, and boots inside — a warden’s uniform.

She pulls the cap over her head, and the elaborate little piece of ornate metal on a string loop goes around her neck and inside the jacket. The effect is immediate — her fur changes to match the Senior Warden’s in hue.

“Flush the paper, quick. Get into the mantrap.”

Catra does.

The mantrap cycles and she steps out next to the Senior Warden. “So, what now?”

The being before her vanishes into an amorphous person-shaped blob of darkness, and out of that darkness emerges a feliform woman in her twenties, dressed in a prisoner’s jumpsuit, with early signs of greying at the temples; light-brown fur and sporadic reddish stripes. Her eyes are heterochromatic, one yellow, one blue.

Catra jumps back. “Who are you?! _What_ are you?!”

The being takes out a pair of handcuffs and cuffs themself. “I’m Catra. I’m a prisoner. You’re Senior Warden Felicia, we’re going to evacuate to the yard…”

The fire alarm goes off.

“… Now.”

Double Trouble pushes Catra in front, and as they jog down the hall, grabs an evacuation guide plaque from the wall, and hands it to Catra. The whole wing of Special Solitary is empty, save for Catra — fortunately.

Catra follows the map on it, down the hall, through the open access control mantrap, down the stairs, through another control point, and out the doors to the front yard.

A substantial group is already forming, and on the most distant wing of the building, black smoke is rising. At least the fire is real enough.

Three wardens approach Catra, and she gets a spot of jitters for a moment.

“Senior Warden, that prisoner is dangerous. Please allow us to take over,” one of them says.

“Additionally, your presence is requested at the main entrance,” another says. “I’ll escort you.”

Catra is led through the three redundant gates in the front yard, past the guard towers with the machine guns, and out to the road, where an unmarked van is waiting.

The back of it opens, and two civilian-dressed women, equipped with a kind of carbine weapon Catra doesn’t recognize — short things with long magazines for pistol calibers. Both are immediately pointed at her.

“Get in.”

Catra complies.

One of the two women stomps twice, and the van starts moving.

* * *

She’s taken on a _long_ car ride, and only knows where to when she hears the unmistakable sound of an aircraft overhead. Neither of the two guards say a single word on the

The van stops, the doors open, and Catra steps out, onto a small rest stop by a lake. Around her is the open countryside.

Out on the water is the main attraction: a flying boat. A massive aircraft with quadruple propeller engines, and a fuselage that doubles as a boat hull. It sits at the end of a narrow pier.

Aboard the plane is a spartan cargo hold with rows of empty seats. The only other item in the hold is a removable fuel tank, for long haul flying. One of the seats has a box strapped in.

“Hey, strap on in!” the pilot calls through the open door to the cabin. “I’ve been told to tell you not to try anything. I’m not sure what that means, lass.”

“Me either,” Catra replies.

She could conceivably threaten him to drop her off somewhere, but the question would be _where?_ By the time Double Trouble’s deception is uncovered, she’ll be a wanted fugitive in the Hordelands. Any police department with a telegraph connection will know her description — a brown-furred feliform woman with an artificial arm and super strength, shoot on sight.

She could _defect_ but— no. No, she is not going to follow in Adora’s footsteps. That is a coward’s way out, and after all she’s done to the rebels, Adora would pretty much just kill her on sight. That’s what Catra would do. Or maybe capture and torture for intel, _then_ kill.

Actually, capture, then order someone else to do the dirty work. That’s what Catra would do. Just to make sure Adora wouldn’t use something personal between them to compromise the mission.

Maybe give Adora a chance to see sense first? Maybe. Definitely maybe.

On the other hand, the life of an outlaw is unappetizing. Seeing the inside of a prison has told her what she needs to know: outlaws are _stupid._ Too stupid to recognize when they are faced with the choice between death and servitude. Honor is for fools. She’d have to physically beat everyone into submission, _carefully,_ so as to not break the merchandise.

The engines start, and the plane starts moving on the water.

Catra takes a seat next to the box, which appears to be for her. She straps in.

The box contains a mission packet: maps of the desert — a vast expanse of uncharted territory; diagrams and data on the area and likely nature of the objective — First-Ones’ tech, so a giant unknown; descriptions of the local population — backwater smugglers; parameters of engagement — whatever; equipment — none.

Not even a change of clothes out of this fucking prison warden uniform.

There’s a magnetic audio tape and a battery-powered playback device too. Catra inserts the tape roll, threads it through the reader, and presses the playback button.

“ _Hey! Catra. Hi. I hope you can operate the playback device I’m putting in the box, because I can’t find the manual, and I’m not going to write one because I don’t have time! — Careful with that! — Sorry, I’m recording this while working._ ”

It’s Entrapta. There’s machine noise in the background.

“ _So! If you’re hearing this, it means I saved your life! Which you can thank me for if you want, but you don’t need to get me a gift or anything, or save my life in return. Hold on…_ ”

There’s a pause of almost a minute.

“ _… I forgot to pause the recording there. Oh well, plenty of tape. Where was I, oh yeah! The thing I’m sending you after — I don’t know a lot about it. There’s some kind of interference with my readings. Either that means it is in a highly unusual location, or it is highly nonstandard piece of First-Ones’ tech. Could be anything really._ ”

Great.

“ _I’ve got Scorpia to make an actual mission packet for you, she says you like those, so she asked for permission to do that. She’s on leave for some reason? Family illness? I miss her: she’s a good assistant. Note to — wait no, different recorder for that._ ”

There’s an exceptionally loud ‘clang’ that makes the speakers crackle.

“ _Oops. Anyway, Hor-hor says he’ll give you a full pardon and your old rank back if you pull through. So yay! Good for you. Oh, shit, that’s an oil fire okay!_ —”

The recording cuts out.

Catra leans back in the seat. “Hey!” she calls.

“Yeah?” the pilot responds.

“Long haul flight, yeah? Do you sleep in shifts?”

“Yup. My co-pilot is asleep right here, actually.”

“Do you piss in a bottle too?”

He laughs. “Yup! Inglorious, but yeah.”

“Think I could borrow one of those bottles?”

* * *

Catra is woken up by the shudder of the plane landing. By her reckoning it’s been no more than four hours of flight — a far cry from her back-of-the-envelope estimate of fourteen hours: from the Fright Zone, west over the Western Hordelands, past the Western Front, south past the Brightmoon Peninsula, across the Middle Sea, to the coast of the Wastes. The flying boat is not a fast plane. So it says in the mission file.

“What’s going on?” Catra calls.

“Layover. Picking up a passenger.”

Catra unstraps herself and hides behind the fuel tank, waiting there, irrationally afraid for the tense ten minutes it takes the plane to taxi to whatever pier they are stopping at.

Finally the engines cut out, and Catra gets the first glimpse of the pilot and co-pilot, as they exit the plane to starboard: two unassuming human men in navy uniforms.

The pilot stops to survey the cargo hold. “Hey Ace, where did she go?” he asks.

The co-pilot stops and looks. “Not our job, Skipper.”

Catra sits there, in her hiding spot for what feels like an eternity, and there’s few limits to what she would give for a wristwatch.

Then finally, the two pilots return, and a third figure enters. Catra peeks around the fuel tank to put a face to the sound of boots on metal and gets to see something pleasantly surprising for once in this whole week.

Scorpia. With dark circles under her eyes, disheveled uniform, and rolling a cart onboard laden with duffel bags, backpacks, and crates.

Catra steps out from her hiding spot. “Scorpia?” she asks.

Scorpia looks up, and the tension and worry leaves her face in an instant. “ _Wildcat!_ ” In an eyeblink she’s there, pulling Catra into the comprehensive embrace one can only receive from someone twice one’s own size.

“Miss me much?” Catra asks.

“Oh you have no idea — I’ve been sick with worry, they just came and spirited you away in the night!” Scorpia exclaims. “And then like, two days later Hordak usurps the entire government in — I want to call it a coup but it was more like they just willingly made him Supreme Chancellor? There’s something shady going on. And then Entrapta puts me in charge of this expedition to the Crimson Wastes, which I discover an hour into my research that _you_ are going to be the sole member of!”

“You shouldn’t have come for me,” Catra says. “We’re going to one of the most inhospitable places on Etheria. There’s a very real chance we’ll die there.”

“I made you that packet, and yet here I am,” Scorpia replies. “Look, whatever that First-Ones’ artifact is, we’ll find it, and report back. You’ll get a pardon, and we’ll be back in no time!”

Catra looks down. “Yeah.”

“Anyway, let’s get you in some fresh clothes — what are you even wearing?”

“Prison escape disguise.”

“Ah. Anyway, help me out?”

The little luggage cart Scorpia has brought along turns out to be the best thing Catra has seen this whole week. Food for the trip, spare clothes, toiletries, spending money, and even weapons.

Unpacking to find a set of spare clothes, Catra finds the forehead protector she’s been wearing since before the Ash Corridor. Scorpia has stripped off the white paint and re-applied a fresh coat of ochre red.

There’s a heavy feeling in her chest, and she doesn’t understand why.


	10. Yelsie, Huntara

The river barge reaches the delta of the river that forms the spine of Candila — so ubiquitously referred to in the singular that most people forget it is officially called the Serpentine.

There, small settlements on stilts dot the brackish waters’ shores, and in the distance, to the north, is the second-most important city in Candila; the City of Blue Waves. The port city that bridges Candila’s blue and brown water merchant fleets — where the river barges unload onto cargo ships and vice-versa.

The coal barge heads there, and Adora, Bow, Glimmer, and Juliet stands at the bow to watch the approach.

“No way,” Bow says.

“What?” Adora asks.

He points at a tiny length of a ship, anchored outside the harbor; a mere speck in the distance.

“What do your ranger eyes see?” Glimmer asks sardonically.

“I’m _fairly_ sure that there is the Salinean Royal Yacht.”

“No way, what is it doing here?” Adora asks.

“Probably restitution,” Glimmer says. “Last I heard the Empress was involved in a total mobilization of the Salinean fleet to attack the Horde navy in the Southern Ocean. But those engagements were —” she counts on her fingers “— back just before we left Honeydew.”

“So why is it in Candila?” Bow asks.

“Because it’s warm? Would you want to go vacationing in Salineas this time of year?” Glimmer asks.

“Eh, no?”

They get closer and indeed: it is the Royal Yacht. Glimmer orders the skipper to sail closer. A Salinean patrol interceptor notices their approach and sets course for them — a slim sloop-of-war approaching with roll under the wind load, and Salinean soldiers lining the deck.

The skipper puts the barge in full stop, and the sloop-of-war reaches them, heaving to withing shouting distance, to the starboard of the barge.

“ _Halt! You are approaching a ship of Salineas, identify yourselves!_ ”

Glimmer hops on the railing, flaring her wings. “ _This is Princess Glimmer of Salineas, personal friend of the Empress. Our conveyance is by way of a simple bargeman. We wish to visit the Empress._ ”

“ _Stand by!_ ”

They start hoisting signal flags, and over the course of a few minutes carry out a succinct conversation with the Royal Yacht.

“ _The Empress gives you the go-ahead, but please board our ship for final approach. We’ll send over a longboat._ ”

Glimmer turns to Juliet. “Go pay the skipper the last of his fee.”

* * *

The Yacht is much as they remember it, when they — well, _Glimmer_ — forged the first link in the chain that is the Alliance of the Free Kingdoms.

They are greeted on deck by a manservant. “This way, if the Princess pleases.”

He leads them aft to the sundeck.

There, at the center of it all, is Mermista and Sea Hawk sitting on a deck chairs, with little Adora sitting in her mother’s lap. Standing by are the usual waitstaff, and a much younger woman who seems out of place until Adora makes the connection, by the cut of her blouse — a wet-nurse.

“By the seas themselves!” Sea Hawk says. “There they are! Princess Glimmer of Brightmoon — hero of Elberon, General Adora, She-Ra — savior of Thaymor, and our Esteemed Ranger Bow! Welcome aboard!”

Mermista tries futilely to get little Adora to look their way; there isn’t much intentionality to impart onto the actions of a three month old infant.

Adora however, is quick to drop her backpack and approach.

“Look Adora, it’s your name-mother,” Mermista coons.

Adora kneels down. Little Adora looks up with the utter surprise only a baby can muster. Her upper lip is completely devoid of skin pigment, but perfectly formed. Adora offers a fingertip and a very tiny baby hand reaches out to grasp it. “Hello,” Adora says, taking off her broad-brimmed hat.

“Aw,” Glimmer coos, grabbing Bow’s arm. “So cute!”

“Indeed,” Sea Hawk concurs. “So very, very cute. I find myself shirking my duties just to look at her.”

“How has it been with the war?” Adora asks Mermista. “I hear you were out fighting?”

Mermista nods. “It hurts to leave her behind; sometimes for days at a time.” She bounces little Adora, getting a little noise as a reaction to the sudden movement. “I’m not giving enough milk, either.”

Adora nods; despite having no idea what childcare is like.

“You’re not just here for a social visit?” Sea Hawk asks Glimmer and Bow. “What with your packs and garb, I’d say you’re looking to cross the desert?”

“We’re going up the coast, to Yelsie, then inland,” Bow explains.

“That sounds like an adventure! Dear!”

“Yes?” Mermista answers.

“Fancy a trip up the coast to a little hive of scum and villainy?”

Mermista waves in assent.

Sea Hawk turns to one of the sailors, “send for the helmsman to plot a course north to Yelsie!”

“Yes Captain!”

Suddenly the trip has turned a lot more pleasant.

Adora spends most of the two-day trip up the coast playing with Little Adora.

Mermista brings Glimmer up to date on the southern naval theater where Salineas is striking hard against the Horde led by Mermista. Glimmer has news from the western front where Brightmoon and Snows are advancing into the Hordelands; Snows’ forces led by Frosta, the Brightmoon forces led by Spinnerella and Netossa, and Plumerians striking from the Whispering woods led by Perfuma.

(The disparity in Runestone Princesses is made up for the fact that naval losses are counted in ships alone, not men and miles. And Mermista is a _very_ expensive opponent.)

Bow and Sea Hawk discuss the mission at hand — these are Sea Hawk’s old hunting grounds when he was the Pirate King.

“You know, Bow; remember how I been calling you boy?” Sea Hawk swirls his cup of wine.

Bow looks at Sea hawk. “Yeah? And ‘son’ and ‘little brother’ too.”

Sea Hawk turns and leans on the map table. “I’m fond of you, Bow. You remind me of the best parts of myself when I was your age. But since I last saw you, you’ve changed.”

“So?” Bow says.

“So! You’ve grown, brother. Your boyish courage has refined itself into the fine wine of a man’s wisdom. My heart swells; I’d say with pride but I had no part in it, and I am loath to take unearned credit.”

Bow furrows his brows. “… Thanks?”

“What I’m saying is; when all of this war business is over; I would like to spend more time with you. We’re, what, acquaintances now — and I’m perhaps too forward half the time. I think we could be _great_ friends, if we had more time, brother.”

“I’ll take you up on that,” Bow says. “You know, when we first me, I kind developed a crush on you.”

Sea Hawk laughs. “How candid! See? A man’s wisdom. I’m afraid my wife and I are quite exclusive; but what happened to these feelings of yours?”

“I fell in with a Princess of my own — Perfuma?”

“The _forest girl._ I should have known. How’s she?”

“Fine. We fell out again.”

Sea Hawk grabs a cup from the stack on the table, and pours Bow a cup of wine. “Let’s have a toast to that; then get back to work.”

* * *

Their destination is the free coastal town of Yelsie. Like all unplanned coastal towns, it sits within a natural harbor.

When the rain reservoirs run dry, its drinking water is supplied by the very same technology that allowed Salineas to become the empire it is, with refuges for its vast navies on many islands without drinking water: distillation. Structures of paired covered brickwork reservoirs; one painted black, the other buried or painted white, connected by a chimney.

These water distilleries dot the entire length of the coast within the harbor, producing precious life giving fresh water, from base ocean stock. The first such distillery ever built in Yelsie was raised by the very fishermen who sought refuge here and found the harbor accommodating and the seas outside it rich with fish and poor in Salinean oversight.

The Royal Yacht and her flotilla anchor outside it, and Adora, Glimmer, and Bow say their goodbyes and board one of the interceptors to go into harbor.

This is of course eye-catching in-and-of itself. Salinean ships are never really a welcome sight, but then nobody is looking to rebel — which is to say commit suicide by Naval Officer.

The helmsman and crew of the sloop-of-war neatly heave the ship to pier, and lower the gangplank just to drop off the four passengers, before heading out again. The whole process made much easier by the steam engines onboard, driving not paddles but a helical screw below the waterline.

This leaves Adora, Bow, Glimmer, and Juliet standing on the pier in foreign land, with only the heavy packs on their backs to their name. They head up the pier to land, drawing stares.

“Stay sharp,” Juliet says.

“Duh,” Adora says.

“We’re being followed, I mean.” Juliet jabs a thumb over her shoulder.

They all turn around to look, and see three people following them: a green-skinned, four-horned man — a troll — a satyr, and a gecko-kin lizardwoman. All three of them get _very_ busy looking causal.

“Hey!” Juliet calls out. She draws a pistol — Horde made. She has First-Ones’ arms, but those don’t _look_ like guns. “Find someone easier to mug, yeah?”

The troll nods and gives a wave.

“Really?” Bow asks. “Find someone easier to mug?”

“We’re not here to save these people,” Juliet says. “We’re here to accomplish our mission.”

They reach shore. The late-morning sun is beating down from above; not a single person in the dockside main street — and not that there are a lot — are wearing broad-rimmed hats.

“This is bustling,” Bow notes, sarcastically.

“Remember in Candila they had mid-day rest? We’re further north, but I think it might be the same,” Glimmer replies.

“Let’s find someone in charge; and start procuring water rations and animals,” Adora says.

“I’ll insist we don’t split up,” Juliet says.

* * *

Like most smuggler towns, Yelsie doesn’t have any sort of explicit authority. Asking around gets them contradictory answers, unsubtle requests for bribes, or just those who prefer to dodge the question.

“I get the feeling there’s some sort of fierce warlord behind this,” Adora says.

“The size of a rich man’s ego is reflected by his front gate,” Juliet recites. An old adage.

“You know what, let’s just go find someplace that has camels to buy and blow out of town,” Bow says.

“I’m afraid we won’t have much of a choice,” Glimmer says. “We’ve drawn attention to ourselves.”

Juliet glances around, and sees nothing.

“Not like that; I mean someone has probably run off to tell the man with the bug front gate that we’re out looking for him,” Glimmer clarifies. “Whatever we do next, we’re likely to be interrupted.”

They go to the southern side of town, which has access to the open desert to the west; the north side lies sheltered by a rocky escarpment.

“That.” Bow says suddenly, while they walk.

“What?” Glimmer asks.

He points to a building — white limewash, flat roof; same as the other nicer houses in town, contrasted by the literal driftwood sheds that dot the northernmost part of town.

It is not a house, though; rather more of a compound or perhaps mansion going by sheer size.

“See behind it?”

Jutting just over the silhouette of the building is green.

“That’s a palm tree; I think dates. Those require a _lot_ of water.”

“And we’re in the middle of a desert. That’s a big front gate,” Adora concurs. “Let’s go knock on it.”

They head to the property, off the main street; it is encircled by a rough brick wall, waist high, with the white lime-wash, but sans the plaster.

Just as they approach, the front doors swing open, and six people in practical clothes — and probably discretely armed — step out. The seventh to exit is an orc woman who exemplifies how old age carry no weakness with it for her kind. Her hair is white, and her purple-tan face betrays scars and smile lines; she’s tall, broad-shouldered, muscular, and dressed to show it off.

“Ah!” she exclaims as she catches sight of the four strangers. “I was just about to go looking for four troublemaking outsiders fitting your description!”

Adora steps forward, and takes lead, the others follow behind her.

“We thought we’d sleuth around and save you the trouble of coming to get us,” she says.

The orc woman snickers, and heads down the walkway to the property wall, stopping just short of the road. Adora comes to a stop withing polite conversation range. “Well met, might we ask your name?”

“I’m Huntara, and there’s a few rules in my town,” she says. “One? I make the rules. Two? Don’t go poking your nose in my things; if we have business, I will bring it to you.”

“On whose authority do you get to make the rules?” Glimmer asks.

“The kind of authority that comes at the end of a sword, girl.”

Glimmer snickers. “Right of conquest, huh?”

Huntara glares. “Is something funny?”

Adora holds out a hand in front of Glimmer. “We don’t want to get off on the wrong foot—” she says.

“Your idiot friend here does,” Huntara says. “And you’ve got the bearing of a coward. That’ll get you killed in a heartbeat out here; people out here smell blood.”

Adora clenches a fist.

“Adora,” Juliet says, warning. “Don’t start anything.”

The six henchmen have drawn aside their ponchos, and are each resting a hand on a flintlock pistol, sitting under waistbands, next to long daggers.

“Huntara,” Adora says. “I am General Adora of the Brightmoon Army, this is Scout Captain Bow of the Brightmoon Rangers, Captain Juliet of the Brightmoon Royal Guard, and Princess Glimmer of Brightmoon.”

“Oh, so you’re saying I should take you prisoner, rob you, and ransom you back to Brightmoon.”

Adora closes her eyes briefly. “Listen—”

“No, _you_ listen!” Huntara barks. “Get to the damn point, girl! This isn’t the mutual admiration society of important idiots—”

There’s a flash of light, and She-Ra’s hand is around Huntara’s throat, and a silver pistol pressed against her cheek. The little Runestone suppressing belt pouch flaps open against She-Ra’s hip.

“Shut. The. Fuck. Up,” Adora says through clenched teeth.

Huntara grins. “All right. Point made. Please, put me down, and let me show you inside; you must be thirsty after all that travel!”

The six henchmen all immediately conceal their guns and step back.

Adora blinks. “Wh— What?”

“General?” Huntara asks, then quietly she says: “You’ve made your show of force; now accept my show of submission, woman.”

Adora lets go.

Huntara steps aside, and gestures broadly towards the door.

* * *

“So, that was one hell of a magic trick, General. I’ve seen some things in my time, but never anything like that!” Huntara says.

They’re seated in a comfortable lounge area, fitted with divans and drapes on the walls. High windows cast a pleasant daylight into the room, and burning incense fills the room with cloying aromas. A well-dressed orc manservant — who is obviously a capable warrior — serves them strong tea, small glasses of distilled spirit, and salted dried fruit.

“I can tell you,” Glimmer begins, "that you chose a very bad day to play hard with newcomers. We’re some of the most powerful individuals in the world; Adora here is the current incarnation of the legendary champion She-Ra, I am the wielder of the Moonstone and a fairly capable battle sorcerer. Bow here is the most capable archer in Brightmoon, and my guardswoman Juliet is capable in her own right. We’re also heavily armed with advanced magical weaponry of First-Ones origin.

“If you had let Adora explain herself, you would know that we’re not idiots walking into dangerous lands, expecting to let our titles protect us.”

Huntara nods. “That is very impressive. Out here we survive by our wits and our blades, mostly.”

“We’re here because we’re looking to travel into the desert, on an archaeological expedition,” Glimmer continues. “For this we’re in need of animals, rations, and a guide.”

Huntara leans back. “You’re going digging in the dirt? Pardon my asking, but isn’t there a war going on? Last I heard between the Horde and the Rebellion?”

“The _Alliance,_ thank you,” Glimmer says.

“Wait,” Adora says. “It’s _only_ the Horde that calls it that.” She sits up straighter in her seat, and her hand goes to the heat ray gun in her belt. “This is a trap!”

Huntara rises to her feet in one quick movement, pointing a finger at Adora. “You are _not_ to accuse me of such cowardice in my _own house!_ ” she yells. “I show you _sacred hospitality_ and _this is how you thank me?!_ ”

Dead silence pervades the room.

“Please, excuse her outburst, Huntara,” Bow says. “We are not in any way ungrateful for your hospitality, or accusing you of cowardice. There is any number of ways the Horde could turn otherwise honorable people to their cause.”

“They have not done so with _me,_ I assure you,” Huntara says, “because I was once part of the Horde.”

“Oh.” Adora says. “Me too.”

Huntara looks at her, raising an eyebrow.

“Why did you leave?” Adora asks.

Huntara sits down.

“Because I was ordered to send my company to their deaths, in an excessively bloody battle for control over a stretch of desert, with Apierian and Candilan armies attacking from opposite sides. We won it, to be sure; it’s the oilfields out northeast of Dryl.”

Adora furrows her brow. “But that’s… That battle was in the _previous_ expansion! That was over twenty years ago! You were a commanding officer already back then? How old are you?”

“Seventy-two. Why did _you_ leave, girl?”

Adora looks downcast. “Because I read Chancellor Hordak’s manuals of military ethics, and to this day I stand by them. Then they asked me to participate in an artillery strike on a civilian settlement. The officers told an entire artillery battery and a tank platoon to go commit a war crime based on willfully inaccurate intel.”

“And your men?”

Adora shakes her head. “I was just a Warrant Officer; I defected in captivity.”

Huntara nods, and sips her tea. “So. What’s at stake? Victory? Defeat?”

Glimmer, Adora and Bow look at each other.

“Could you send your men out?” Glimmer says.

Huntara waves a hand, and the servants and four guards posted in the corners of the room all leave with haste.

“The Horde is losing the war,” Adora says. “We have another defecting prisoner who says Chancellor Hordak is searching for… A technological means of instant and total victory. He would be able to conquer and subjugate all of Etheria in a very short time, if he is successful.”

“According to another source,” Bow adds, “there is also a very real chance that they could render large parts of Etheria even _more_ uninhabitable than the Crimson Wastes.”

Huntara frowns deeply. “Do you know how the Crimson Wastes came to be?”

There’s a round of head shakes.

"Over five hundred years ago there was an archipelago off the coast to the north, called Mystacor. The coastal stretch was green back then, and home to a kingdom of the Orcs. Mystacor used great magics to destroy the soils of the kingdom rendering it a desert, and destroying the kingdom. Then they lifted their islands into the sky and drifted east over the sea, never to be seen again.

“Then, a hundred years ago, the Fight Zone became the first Hordeland, and their army marched northeast into the Magicat kingdom. There, they razed the land, drove its people into exile, and plundered its riches. Supposedly The Scorpion King destroyed their Runestone with one swing of his hammer.”

Glimmer covers her mouth.

“It’s said that in its death throes, the Runestone’s vengeance was to destroy the land there as well; two cataclysms, forming one Crimson Waste.”

“Are… Are you some kind of historian?” Bow asks.

Huntara smiles. “I just like the old stories, and when I was younger I traveled the desert and looked at the ruins there.”

“Um; you don’t have a grudge on Mystacor or anything, do you?” Glimmer asks.

“I may be an orc, girl, but I would never trace my bloodline so far back — it is a waste of time to dwell on the histories. But if what you say is true about Chancellor Hordak potentially destroying the world, you have my full support.”

“Really?” Adora asks, surprised.

“Really. Why is this surprising?”

Adora shrugs. “I don’t know, you just seem… Like a self-serving outlaw; pardon my candor.”

Huntara chuckles. “Girl, I am against destroying the world as a matter of practicality; I happen to be one of the fools who live in it. As self-serving as you expect.”

“Did the orc kingdom ever have a Runestone?” Bow asks.

“Not that I ever heard, but much have been lost in the re-tellings,” Huntara says. “Why?”

Bow looks at Adora and Glimmer. “Do we tell her?”

“We have a device that can track magical objects all over the world,” Glimmer says. “There’s a Runestone in the Wastes somewhere.”

Huntara leans forward. “Say, if you throw in your best estimate of _where_ that Runestone is, then I might be inclined to help you procure animals and supplies at a discount.”

“All right,” Adora says, rubbing her hands together. “Let’s talk logistics!”

* * *

The plane ride comes to its inevitable conclusion: they reach the coast of the Crimson Wastes, and the pilot turns the plane north.

Catra spends the descent looking out the windows — the cargo hold is lined with windows well above viewing height, so despite all safety regulations, Catra climbs up to look out.

“Scorpia, look at this,” she says.

“Catra you’re six feet off the floor.”

Catra looks down. “Start acting like you have those Mark Three enhancements, Scorpia.”

“Oh. Right.”

Scorpia climbs up, effortlessly. “What is?”

“That ship down there, do you recognize it?”

Scorpia squints. “It’s Salinean, a pleasure craft. Lightly armed escort flotilla… Diplomatic vessel?”

“I think it’s the Royal Yacht.”

“Oo~h! Yeah I see it. I agree. What do you think it’s doing here?”

“Reminding us we need to be careful,” Catra says.


	11. Cat's Got Your Tung, Robber King

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: bloody fight, claw injuries

“That’s Yelsie up ahead,” the pilot says. “Strap in.”

“That’s our destination,” Scorpia says.

“Hey!” Catra calls. “Put us down away from the coast; there might be Salinean patrols in the area.”

“All right, ma’am.”

“And we’re taking one of your inflatable lifeboats,” Catra ads.

“Not like I can stop you, can I?” The pilot responds. The plane banks and heads out to sea.

* * *

It’s an hour long paddle into harbor — life rafts don’t have any engines.

“You really didn’t have to come,” Catra says. “This is my punishment, you know? I’ve been sent here to perish in the desert.”

“Yeah.”

“You should have stayed home, safe.”

“Yeah.”

“Working with Entrapta — you like that.”

“Yeah.”

“Whatever noble intentions you have in coming along and saving me? I’d say you’re a fool.”

“You know, if you had said all those things to me before I left, I’d have called you noble, right back.”

Catra turns to look at Scorpia. “Scorpia why did you come?”

It’s a question she hasn’t asked yet, because you don’t have conversations like that where other people can hear, and a plane ride is better spent sleeping.

“First, I think the mission has actual merit. Second, because without me you _are_ going to die. Third… Catra, I’m your _girlfriend._ I’m strong, loyal, and good in bed. Are you really unhappy I’ve tagged along?”

Catra blushes. “I’m angry you have so little regard for your own safety.”

Scorpia smiles. “Is— Is that you _caring?_ ”

“No.”

“I think it _is._ ”

“No, shut up and paddle!”

“Yes, ma’am.”

* * *

They climb out of the raft onto the pier, leaving the raft for whomever wants to take it.

Catra and Scorpia don’t get twenty yards towards shore before three men approach them, dressed in workmen’s clothes; a toll, a satyr, and a lizardfolk.

The troll man opens: “Hey, ladies; we’re here about a little thing called dry tax. You wouldn’t want to get wet would—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Catra says.

“ _Pardon?_ ” he asks.

“I _said_ to shut the fuck up, or I will pay you in lead,” Catra says. Casually she hikes up her blouse and draws her concealed revolver, pointing it at him.

He raises his hands. “All right, all right. A hard bargain; I’ll let you go with a one hundred percent discount on that!”

“Smart.”

The three stand aside to let Catra and Scorpia pass.

Catra walks by the troll and stops in front of him. She turns, and with lightning speed plants a kick in his nethers. He buckles, and Catra follows up with a heel kick to his chest, sending him tumbling off the pier into the water. Before the other two can react, she points her gun at them each in turn.

“Hey, we don’t want no trouble, honest,” the satyr woman grumbles.

“Yeah, you better!” Scorpia says. Catra merely holsters and continues walking.

Scorpia catches up at a trot. “Have I ever told you just how cool it is when you’re like that? Just all _whu-pow!_ Ass-kicking! Taking names!”

Catra snickers. “I’m sure you’re not so bad yourself.”

“I don’t know,” Scorpia says, blushing. “I’m pretty by-the-book, you know?”

Catra looks at her. “You bear a striking resemblance to a Scorpioni Princess I once knew, who ran away to the Crimson Wastes on a whim…”

“Fair point.”

They head up to the main street, and find a seedy tavern that makes their little refuge bar back in Capital look like a classy establishment. Somehow, the main building is constructed on the ribcage of some leviathan creature — possibly from the sea.

There’s a air of tension hanging among the patrons — the place is at about half capacity.

Catra takes a seat at the bar next to a cobra-kin lizardwoman, and shrugs off her pack.

“Buzz off kitty cat,” she says. “That chair is taken.”

“Scorpia, I think this woman is graciously about to give up her seat,” Catra says.

Scorpia has silently stepped up behind the lizardwoman, and puts her stinger tail against the nape of the woman’s neck. “Yeah. Thank you ever so much for letting me sit next to my girlfriend.”

She gets out of her seat very carefully and backs off.

Catra waves over the bartender, a heavy-set bald minotaur. “Two of whatever you have on tap, and two servings of the house stew. What kind of currency do you take?”

“Salinean Drachms, Silver Marks, Crowns, Shillings…”

“What about Dinar?” Scorpia asks.

“Horde coins? Sure, but there’s a markup.”

“Whatever. Pay the man,” Catra says.

Scorpia digs through her belt pack and pays him in nickel-plated copper coins. The ale is sour and strong, the stew is bland and salty.

“Hey! Come look!”

Catra and Scorpia both look towards the door, where that same cobra-kin lady is standing, wide-eyed. “Tung Lashor’s band just rode into town; they are laying siege to Huntara’s house!”

Suddenly a lot of drinks get left behind as everyone files into the street to take a look.

“What the fuck was that name?” Catra says.

Scorpia shrugs. “Hey, good barkeep, what’s going on?”

“Power struggle.”

“Who’s Huntara and that Lashor guy?” Catra asks.

“Huntara’s the head of the smuggler guild. Lashor’s the leader of a band of highwaymen and mercenaries. She left town with some men.”

The fighting continues outside, but the patrons lose interest and return to their drinks inside.

Two new faces follow the others inside — the satyr and lizardwoman who accosted Catra and Scorpia on the pier. They spot Catra and Scorpia and avoids eye-contact, picking a table as far from the bar as possible.

“Say, people don’t really seem worried about the fighting?” Scorpia says to the barkeep.

“Nay, Yelsie is as slippery as an eel to hold on to, for those in power. Even if Lashor takes the city, Huntara’ll be back to take it from him again. We’ll probably have another two fights like that before the year is out.”

Scorpia turns to Catra. “Good riddance, huh? Imagine—”

Catra shushes her, ears twitching. Then she turns towards the table with the satyr and lizardwoman.

“Hey, satyr! Repeat that last bit about the blonde, the archer, and the purple-haired broad?” Catra calls.

The tavern falls silent.

“Hey what the fuck is your problem?” the satyr says.

“I’m looking for them; hell you can just point the way they went and I’ll figure it out,” Catra says.

The satyr stands and goes up to the bar. “Hey, looks like we have some uppity outsiders here,” she says loudly. “Let’s say we show them how little we like uppity outsiders here in Yelsie!”

Surprisingly, about half of the remaining patrons rise from their seats, and a variety of weapons are drawn; muzzle-loading pistols, knives, clubs. Sixteen people.

Catra laughs. “Oh wow. I kicked your boss clean off the pier, and you still have the guts to threaten me.”

“You’ve got a Candilan six-shooter, yeah? There’s way more than six of us,” the satyr says and draws a long knife.

“Listen, girl,” Catra says. “Threatening people only works on someone with something to lose.” She hops down from her stool and walks towards the satyr; casually placing her left hand on the bar, and digging in her claws. The artificial tips gouge four deep furrows in the hard wood. “Me? I’ve already lost _everything,_ and you? You’re standing between me and getting everything back.”

With a lightning fast movement, Catra snatches the knife by the blade, to the astonishment of the satyr.

Casually, Catra grabs the hilt with her other hand, and bends the flexible steel into a pretzel, tossing it over one shoulder. Then she draws her snub-nosed revolver from her waistband so fast one would miss it by blinking, and shoves the barrel in the woman’s nose, cocking the hammer with a clawed thumb, menacingly.

“Yeah, I have six shots. That’s one for you, one for your friend sneaking up behind me —”

True enough the gecko-kin woman has been making her way behind Catra, with a club. She freezes.

“— and four more.” She turns her head to address the room. “Line up, who wants to die for this asshole here? I’m a fucking excellent shot, and this thing might be small, but I’ve killed tougher people with it than any of you with it!”

Scorpia removes her glove to reveal her intimidating pincers underneath, and looms over the lizardwoman. “Did you just forget that I was here?” she asks.

Catra turns to the room fully, taking her gun out of the satyr’s nose. “Listen people, myself and my companion here, we’re the most hardened killers the Horde has to offer — and while you might think you’re hot shit in this backwater smuggling town? Compared to us, you’re not. I’ve killed more people than any of you’ve ever _seen._ I was exiled from the most blood-thirsty nation in the world, who is currently waging war with _literally_ everyone, for been _too ruthless._ ”

Catra turns to the satyr, and holsters her gun. “Your old boss, that troll? You don’t like him.”

“Uh.”

“What’s your name?”

“Mira?”

Catra puts a hand on Mira’s shoulder. “We’ve gotten off on the wrong foot; you’re an idiot, but you’re willing to stab people. I can use you. Let me buy you and your idiot friend a drink.”

Mira looks past Catra at her friend, who nods. Scorpia is casually resting her pincer on the lizardwoman’s shoulder. “H-her name is Ximena.”

“Put your damn guns away!” the barkeep says. “I’ll collect the tabs of anyone who still has a gun out in ten seconds. This crazy cat lady fits right in here in Yelsie; by my count she ain’t no outsider by my count.”

Mira and Ximena sit,

Catra takes a seat. “So, tell me about the blonde, the purple-haired broad, and the archer?”

“Um, Catra?” Scorpia says. “Aren’t we supposed to go after that First-Ones’ tech Hordak wants?”

“Yeah, and how much do you want to bet they _aren’t_ here for the same thing we are? Do you think they found us in the arctic by _chance?_ ” Catra turns back to Mira. “Spill.”

“Well, they went to Huntara, I heard.”

Catra turns to the barkeep. “Did Huntara leave with anyone? A girl with purple hair by chance?”

“Might have,” the barkeep says.

Catra nods. “Drink up, you two.” She grabs her bowl of stew and scarfs it down, wiping her lips in the sleeve of her jacket. “We’re going to find out where Huntara went.”

* * *

Catra, Scorpia, and their two new henchmen — Mira and Ximena are not _quite_ sure about these two soldiery types carrying backpacks as big as they are — step into the street.

Half a mile down the street, the fighting has subsided. There’s a fire billowing black smoke; something wet is burning, perhaps plants. Catra begins walking, and the others follow.

“Scorpia, can I have a smoke?”

Scorpia digs through her pocket for one of the three packs of precious, precious cheroots. Strict rationing is required — Catra’s enhancements prevent physical symptoms and has thus far protected her lungs, but when absolute focus is required, she needs a little extra to steady the nerves. Tobacco is unfortunately uniquely a Hordelands product at this point.

Catra puts it between her lips, but doesn’t take out a lighter.

“So, I know you’re a master strategist and such,” Scorpia begins, “but that is a _lot_ of heavily armed blackguards, so could we maybe be a little diplomatic about this? Back at the tavern, that was a close call.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Catra says. “I’m not suicidal, am I?”

Scorpia doesn’t reply.

They reach shouting distance of the group — some thirty men, women, and esteemed criminals, of near every race and species; save sea-elves. Their dress is far from uniform, but black seems to be a pervasive theme.

They are congregated in front of a large house, its limewashed white facade speckled in bullet holes, and a lively fire going on in what appears to be a courtyard inside. The house itself isn’t actually burning, or at least not yet; another ten or so robbers are running in and out of the house, carrying armfuls of documents, sacks of loot, and furniture.

In front of the low wall delineating the property is a row of fifteen or so people, kneeling, hands bound behind their backs. Prisoners.

“Hey!” Catra calls out. “Lovely day for a ransacking, isn’t it?”

Several armed people turn their way. “Piss off, puss,” someone yells.

“I’m afraid I can’t do that,” Catra calls back. “See, I hear Huntara’s left town; and she’s with someone I’m looking for. So I was hoping I could take some of these captives off your hands, and they could lead me to their boss!”

“Are ye deaf, girl? Piss. Off. Puss!” comes the reply.

Catra turns to Scorpia, with a look that says ‘ _I’m trying, all right?_ ’ then turns back to the crowd. “Can I speak to whoever’s in charge? I heard speak of an infamous Tung Lashor?”

The group parts, and the largest lizardman Catra has ever seen steps forward. He’s two heads taller than Rogelio, and half again as wide; crimson-red skin. Some kind of crocodilian-kin.

“Who the fuck wants to know?” he bellows.

“Hi, Tung Lashor? Wauw! You’re even bigger in person!” Catra says, injecting as much false awe as she can. “I’m Catra; big fan of the whole looting and burning thing you have going on.”

Tung is evidently easy to flatter, because he puffs himself up somewhat, and steps forward. “What can I do for you?”

“I’m looking for Huntara.”

Tung’s smile sours. “Friend of yours? ’Fraid she’s not home.”

“Oh, no-no. She has something with her — someone — that I’m after. I’m guessing since you’re _here_ and not out in the desert hunting her down, you’re more concerned with the town, than the person, correct?”

Tung spreads his arms. “You are correct, kitten! Yelsie belongs to Tung Lashor! Robber King! Strongest in the Wastes!”

His merry band of henchmen begin chanting his name: “ _Tung Lashor! Tung Lashor! Tung Lashor!_ ” until hi holds up a hand. “Huntara’s house is in flames, her loyal men will die today, and she is old and grey. She has gone into the desert to die!”

“I heard differently, but okay,” Catra says. “I want the prisoners.” She points. “They might be able to tell me where Huntara went.”

“These cowards will die, today,” Tung says. “They have defied me, sided with me enemy. I do not let people _go._ ”

“Pretty please? Even if I promise to kill them afterwards?”

“Tung Lashor does not indulge beggars!”

“ _Referring to himself in third person, what an insufferable buffoon,_ ” Catra mutters just loud enough for Scorpia, Mira, and Ximena to hear. “What about a trade?”

“You have nothing I want.”

“What about a blowjob from Ximena here? —”

“ _What?!_ ” Ximena squeaks.

“— Or I’ll even give you one myself; I got that rough tongue I hear is a big plus.”

Tung laughs. “A _woman?_ I think not, harlot!”

“ _He’s gay, would you look at that,_ ” Scorpia mutters.

“ _And sexual morals. Weird,_ ” Catra replies. “All right. All right. One last proposal.”

Tung crosses his arms. “What?”

“You’re the ‘Strongest In the Wastes’ are you not?”

“Aye.”

“So if I beat you in single combat?”

This gets uproarious laughter from everyone present. Catra patiently waits.

“You’re _serious?_ ” Tung says, incredulously.

“Dead. How does it go, the challenger picks the time, the challenged picks the weapon? Right here and now, unless you want to forfeit right away. Fight me you big dumb coward.”

Tung frowns. “Tung Lashor will destroy you. Have you a blade, small cat?”

“I have a knife…”

Tung Lashor holds out a hand, and a young human boy, skin dark as dirt and dressed in tatters, runs up to him with a weapon: a broad sword-blade in a scabbard, with a hilt as long as the blade itself. He draws it, and rests it over his shoulder. “Have you a _blade?_ ”

“No.”

“Then how am I supposed to properly fight you with honor?”

Catra laughs. “ _Honor?!_ This is the Crimson Wastes, you idiot. The only way to show _real_ strength is to kill with your _bare hands._ ”

Tung thinks on it for a second, then sheathes his blade, and hands it back to the boy. He shrugs off his vest, and kicks off his boots — loose. “Tung Lashor approves of your suggestion.”

Catra shrugs off her backpack, then her sand-colored jacket, and pulls her white blouse overhead, leaving her wearing only a breastband. A few whistles come from the peanut gallery. She removes the gun in her waistband, the knife on her wrist, then undoes her boot laces by bending at the waist, and discards them with the ankle holstered second gun and knife.

Last, she rolls up her cuffs, and stands. She points to one of Tung’s cronies. A gangly faun. “You, come pat me down for hidden weapons. Mira, go pat down Tung, make sure he doesn’t have a knife strapped to his dick.”

Tung nods and gestures for Mira to come to him.

The faun woman comes over to Catra, and pulls out her breastband to look inside, finding only Catra’s modestly sized bust. “Going straight for the goods, huh?” Catra says.

“I’m not gay,” the woman bites back. She pats down Catra’s pants, checks her pockets, finding nothing. She then slaps Catra on the pubic area, perhaps a little harder than is necessary. “Freak.” She stands. “What the fuck is with your arm?”

“Skin condition, what the fuck is it to you?”

Then the faun reaches out and takes Catra’s headpiece. “You can stab someone with this.” She throws it on the ground, then runs her fingers through Catra’s hair. Finding nothing else she makes a rude gesture, turns to walk back to her group. “She’s clean, no tricks.”

Catra looks to Mira, who turns from Tung Lashor, stepping aside, and nods.

“Then let’s fight,” Catra calls out.

Tung Lashor begins walking forward, not even bothering to fall into a combat stance. He makes a fist, audibly cracking knuckles. “I will pound your pretty little head into paste.”

Catra begins closing in as well. They reach a distance of a few steps, and Catra heads sideways, falling into a casual interpretation of the stance she learned in hand-to-hand training; claws extended.

Tung Lashor turns sideways and puts up his fists. Like Rogelio, he has cartilage pads and thickened scales on his knuckles.

Catra’s tail swishes from side to side, and she quells her instinctual urge to pounce. She is both stronger and faster than this oaf, but no amount of magic and cybernetics can make up for the hundred and fifty pounds of weight difference.

Tung rushes forward with a powerful jab as an opening move, which Catra deflects with her left guard, feeling the power of the blow. _If he lands one of those it’ll hurt._ He follows up with a well-practiced jab combo. Lightning fast blows. Catra ducks and weaves, taking a single grazing hit on her right guard.

He gets bold. Goes for a high kick, aimed at Catra’s midsection; she ducks under, and goes for a counter swipe at his crotch.

Catra isn’t sure how he manages to hop backwards on one leg, but she’s pretty sure Tung used his heavy tail somehow. She doesn’t have time to ponder, as Tung immediately leaps back into the fray with a haymaker.

She lets herself fall supine, and kips back up with a double heel kick to his diaphragm; Tung twists his torso to divert the blow, but it still lands. He dances back, Catra rolls to her feet.

The crowd ‘oo~hs.’

“You’re fast, I’ll give you that,” he says. “But you will need to actually hit me to defeat Tung Lashor!”

He closes again, in three running steps, and Catra dances away backward, coming up against the ring formed by the crowd. Tung comes at her with a flurry of blows and low kicks, keeping Catra on the defensive.

Then he changes tactics and lunges at her, bodily. A grapple. Catra curls her tail around her waist, ducks under his swooping arms and rolls between his legs, then immediately to the side as he brings his tail down in the dirt of the road.

Catra runs along the ring, gaining some distance. She’s working up a sweat; Tung’s chest is moving dramatically with his deep breathing. Someone is passing a hat around with bets in the crowd.

“Scorpia! Put everything we have on me!” Catra calls out. “Say, Tung, are you getting tired?”

“Slippery little eel-cat. You can’t keep running forever,” Tung replies. “Everyone! Two steps in!”

As one, the outlaws that make up the crow take two steps inward, tightening the ring noticeably.

Catra doesn’t let this faze her. She begins closing again. She gets within Tung’s reach, and he starts the well-practiced combo: left, right, left, hook; he spices it up with a shin kick and nearly lands a solid blow.

She dances away, once more. “You’re fast, for a man your size!”

“Shut up.”

Then she closes again, taking care to move the same way as before, and Tung repeats the pattern. The enemy of practice is predictability.

Left, right, left, and as he makes the hook, Catra swipes her cybernetic claws through the underside of his lower arm as she dodges outwards. They cut deep, and the blood starts flowing immediately.

Tung dances backwards, cursing in a language Catra doesn’t speak, and tests his wound with the other hand.

“Shall we call it at first blood?” Catra yells.

This time he comes at her with rage. The enemy of rage is sloppy form. His blows are stronger but slower, and Catra dodges with ease; darts to the side of a haymaker and behind him; she hops the swoop of his tail with a half-spin jump to swipe her left claws over his back.

Four long bright red lines open up on his dark red skin. He stumbles forward; then reverses, turning on a kick-off back towards Catra, arms out, going for the grapple.

Catra drops, but Tung goes low. He catches her around the waist and slams her into the dust. Her head hits the ground hard.

Then there’s a heavy hand on her chest, and she manages to see as Tung pulls back his other hand for a haymaker aimed at her face. She plants her legs and kicks against the ground skew, twisting out from under his grasp, and brings her left arm up against the blow.

The cybernetic arm and spine absorbs the force of the awkward angled impact effortlessly, but she feels it on her ribs, her hip against the road.

Tung draws back for another blow, but Catra brings a leg up to kick him in the chin, to great effect: He rocks back, stumbling to his feet. She kips up, and goes on the offensive. She dodges his hook and jab, and swipes twice against his midsection, carving twin sets of bloody gashes across his belly.

Then as he recoils in pain, bending over, covering his wound with both arms, the opening is generous enough for a risky spinning hook kick. Her heel connects, rattling his head and jaw; Tung stumbles sideways, looses his footing. He lands on elbows, hands and knees, speckling the dirt with blood.

Catra pounces on his tail. Tung tries to kick backwards at her; but misses. She keeps a tight hold on the wiggling appendage, and switches grip to the tail.

Then she digs in her feet, digs in her claws, and pulls, slightly to the side. Tung claws at the dirt as he begins moving. Catra strains, and gains momentum, twisting; Tung tumbles across the dirt.

In a moment that defies common understanding of physics, the small feliform woman swings a lizardman three times her size around by the tail. The ligaments between his vertebrae crackle under her grasp, but she doesn’t feel it; no attention to spare as she leans into the spin so far down her hair touches dirt.

Then she heaves the throw, and Tung goes flying; onlookers dive out of the way, and the huge man tumbles across the road, off the dockside, and into the water.

Catra counter-spins to negate dizziness, and bounds directly after him, jumping into the shallow water, landing a few steps from where Tung is struggling to his feet.

He lunges at her with one last sloppy punch. Catra dodges, gets behind him, and jumps on his back; she puts both hands under his chin, and carves out his neck, severing veins and gouging throat.

Tung stumbles, then falls forward into the water. There he lies, struggling weakly, face down.

Catra stands there until he stops moving. She turns to face the crowd, looking down on her.

The Scorpia starts chanting: “Cat-ra! Cat-ra! Cat-ra!”

The crod joins in. “ _Cat-ra! Cat-ra! Cat-ra!_ ”

“Bring me his blade!” Catra yells.

The boy appears. Catra holds up a hand and he tosses it to her. She unsheathes it and finds it perfectly balanced, if a little long for her stature. Then she does the grisly deed of decapitating the former Robber King.

Sword in one hand, head in the other, she leaps up onto the dock; twice her height in one bound, with a tremendous splash.

“Hail Catra, Robber King!” she bellows, holding aloft Tung’s head.

And hail her they do.


	12. Swift Wind, Beneath the Sand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: death

The first day in the desert is virtually one long lesson in desert survival. Huntara gives off the impression of liking raptly attentive students. It’s the same as most other survival: stay alert for danger, conserve strength, ration your supplies property. The differences lie in the need to conserve water, the need for protective clothing against the sun and heat, and also the freezing cold at night.

It might be tempting to travel under the cover of darkness, but the shifting sands presents its own unseen dangers: sharp rocks, dangerous animals, grotesque mutated dangerous animals, grotesque mutated dangerous plants, and pits of dust so fine you sink in it like water.

Then there’s the need to stay awake.

The sway of a camel can lull the careless desert traveler to sleep, and a fall from a camel hurts. Fall badly enough and you might get injured or worse, get knocked unconscious. In large caravans, that might go unnoticed, and people can get left behind to die of thirst or worse.

They pitch tent — four posts and a _large_ single sheet of canvas — at each midday and let the worst of the searing noon sun pass overhead while they and the camels enjoy the shade; every night they make camp.

The second day they set out after a light breakfast of hardtack, Glimmer takes off, gliding above, scouting, riding the strong morning thermals.

The others ride camels below. Desert travel is boring and occasionally nauseating.

“I _still_ think we should have brought some of your men,” Adora says.

“It is _still_ not up for discussion,” Huntara says. “If you must know my reason: the desert is safer than the town. And, the five of us can travel easier than a larger band could.”

“What if we come up against a big monster? There’s big monsters out here, right?”

Huntara reaches down to her saddle and draws a twin-barreled rifled musket from it. She hefts it over one arm. “This’ll do. Never seen a thing that lives after a shot from this.”

“… And what if we run across a band of robbers?”

“Too dangerous to rob anyone in the desert. If you get injured out here, you die.”

Adora frowns. “I see your reasoning, but I still think more men would be better.”

“Did you hear me right, girl? The town is more dangerous than the desert. I need my men there, not here.”

Adora turns in her saddle. “Bow, how are we looking?”

Bow has made himself quite a nice mount for his tracking device. What was once a single sheet of treated glass, a lodestone, and a spell circle, has grown into a complex arrangement of sheets of bronze etched with circles and diagrams, several screens and indicators, and a kind of ‘gun’ that holds an array of artificial magnets. The whole thing has been artfully strapped to his camel’s saddle, letting him consult the course without dismounting.

“Still fine, we’re heading in the right direction, and it isn’t moving or anything,” he says, holding on to his hat while he consults the one screen he couldn’t mount nicely.

“Juliet?” Adora asks.

Juliet gives a quiet thumb’s up. She’s getting seasick from the sway of the camels.

Adora takes off her hat to look skywards, trying to spot Glimmer. “Bow?”

“Yeah?”

“Have you seen Glimmer?”

“No?”

Glimmer comes gliding just then, from the direction they came, and touches down next to her camel. “Hey! Sorry it took so long; I couldn’t see you from the air; had to find the trail and follow it.”

“Don’t get lost, Princess,” Huntara chides.

“Catch!” Bow tosses Glimmer a lodestone pendant.

She catches it. He holds up its mated stone, also on a pendant, and the two swing slightly towards each other.

“Thanks,” Glimmer says.

“So now that we’re all here,” Huntara says. “And well away from prying eyes, what exactly are you looking for? Is it the Runestone?”

“No, sadly,” Adora says. “We’re looking for… It might be a very large First-Ones’ artifact. As I understand it, a kind of ship that can sail in the sky.”

“Do you know what it looks like?” Huntara asks.

“No. But it used to belong to my mother.”

Huntara looks at Adora for a spell. “Pardon?”

“It’s a _long story,_ but I’m a First One.”

“I’ve heard some tall tales in my time, girl—”

Glimmer chimes in: “Ever heard fairy tales about a princess sleeping for a hundred years?”

“Uh. Maybe?”

“It’s like that.”

Bow chimes in: “It’s big. I can already tell. It’s _very big_ and partially underground.”

“So, is it going to help in the war or..?” Huntara asks.

“Well,” Adora says. She opens the pouch and takes out the finger-ring form of the Aegis. “I have this thing.” She turns it into a pistol, then a rife. “It’s She-Ra’s magical weapon.”

“A week ago,” Glimmer adds, “It turned into a giant monster and nearly killed us. At the same time She-Ra went rogue, and killed a bunch of people in cold blood.”

“My mother was the previous She-Ra,” Adora continues. “I’m hoping she knew something. And wrote it down.”

Huntara whistles. “So… It’s _not_ going to help with the war.”

“If She-Ra and a giant monster kills everyone, the war is irrelevant,” Glimmer says. “The war is moving to a theater where victory hangs on First-Ones’ technology; the Horde has a head-start.”

* * *

Mid-day comes, and they raise the shade tent. They sit in the sand; Juliet takes watch, Bow and Adora fiddle with his trackers. Glimmer casts a spell to cool their water.

“Say, Princess. That is proper sorcery, right?” Huntara asks.

Glimmer nods. “It’s a simple spell; just for creature comforts.”

“Maybe I should learn some myself?”

Glimmer botches the execution of an invocation of the cooling spell. “Huntara, are you _sure_ you don’t have some lingering resentment over what Mystacor did to the land of your ancestors?”

“Yes.”

“Because I was trained in Mystacor. It drifted across the ocean to Brightmoon, and is now one of the three kingdoms subservient to Brightmoon.”

“I _see_ …”

“Before you ask,” Glimmer continues, “no, I have not studied the histories, but when I get back, I’m going to have _words_ with them about the Orc kingdom and whether whatever spell they cast can be undone. I am as much against wanton destruction of the world as you are.”

“Hm,” Huntara says. “You know, people don’t come to Yelsie for the beaches, right? Yelsie is where you end up when you have nowhere else to go. I can’t say I’ve seen many from Brightmoon there, but I’ve seen those from Salineas, Candila, and Apieria. And the picture they paint is… Unflattering.”

Glimmer looks up. “What of it?”

“A… Kingdom is like the hands of its king. Its people are like water.” She cups her hands. “Pour water in cupped hands, you will always spill. You will be Queen someday, no?”

“Correct.”

“There will be those of your own people that you cannot save. The dredges of society, Yelsie? That is the ground you spill on. Outlaws are made by injustice, desperation, and adversity. I’ve seen Kings and Queens wage wars against their own people trying to stamp out criminality. All it has ever done is swell the ranks of smugglers, robbers, and myself.”

“And your point is?”

“Even if you save the world, you must save its people. The Crimson Wastes is a desert, but there are still people here. Ah—” she takes one of the chilled tin cups and drinks. “I’m an old woman; sorry if I am not making sense. I should stick to desert survival, shouldn’t I?”

Glimmer goes back to spell casting. She’s not sure if Huntara should.

* * *

As twilight rolls in, they spot it on the horizon: the long-since collapsed ruins of a city. Sand-blasted stone built on the banks of a dried-out river bed.

Out beyond it, in a stretch of dunes, a monolith sticks out at an angle. Impossibly tall, pristine, and very much artificial.

“Is it that thing?” Huntara asks.

Bow checks his instruments. “Yeah.”

“I should have known; that there is… I think it was called ‘sky needle,’ both the town and the tower out in the sand.”

“Of course,” Adora says. “That thing has been lying there for a thousand years. It would become culturally significant over time.”

They stop for the night in the ruins. Huntara takes the midnight watch.

* * *

“What’s your name?” Catra asks. She kneels in front of the captive woman: a powerfully built troll woman, grey-skinned, and with particularly curled horns; long red hair with a little grey. Her hands are bound behind her back.

“Melissa,” she says in a melodic and pleasant voice.

“I hear you’re head honcho around here whenever Huntara’s out. Is that true?”

Melissa turns to glance at the burning compound behind her. “Well…”

“Huntara left town, what, yesterday? Who with?”

“Four outsiders. Why?”

“Lanky blonde human woman, purple-haired woman with wings?”

Melissa nods.

“Where to?”

“Just follow the camel tracks.”

“What’s she to you, Huntara?”

“Pardon?”

“Look, Arty,” Catra says, “can I call you Arty?”

“No.”

“Arty, I might have saved you from Tung Lashor, but I’m not running a charity,” Catra says. “What is your personal relationship with Huntara?”

“Um… I’m not sure I follow.”

Catra puts her head in her hands. “I’m trying to evaluate your worth as a hostage, idiot. You’re her second-in-command; if I threaten to kill you, will she _listen?_ ”

Melissa looks away.

“I’ll take that as a yes. She cares about you, don’t she?”

Melissa sneers. “Don’t you dare hurt her!”

Catra giggles. “Even better, you care about her! Listen, Arty. I need you to do something for me.” She stands and turns to the gang — _her_ gang — of outlaws. “Listen up everybody! We’re going after Huntara.”

“Why?” someone yells.

“Because!” Catra yells. “She left town with two people who are worth a _lot_ of money if we ransom them off to the right people. And because—” Catra hops onto the low wall, so the burning compound lies behind her. “ _I’m the Robber King, the Strongest in the Wastes; Who am I?_ ”

Scorpia leads the chant: “ _Cat-ra! Cat-ra! Cat-ra!_ ”

“And you!” she points into the crowd, at the caniform man who questioned her authority, “Next time you wanna question my judgment, save me the effort of punching you in your stupid mouth by doing it yourself.”

* * *

The remaining nine prisoners are all markedly less loyal than Melissa. That is how it goes when loyalty is bought, rather than earned — hah! — or more realistically exacted by a scheme of escalating blackmail and manipulating people into emotional dependency. Or so Catra thinks.

The whole gang packs up their camel train and leave town almost as quickly as they arrived. Supplies are haggled for, and the trackers pick up the trail. Catra has to admonish a few idiots and cut a finger off one to remind her gang that Yelsie is their town now — _her_ town — and you don’t shit where you eat.

With Catra in front, behind the two best trackers in her gang — a pair of piebald-furred caniform brothers — they set out to catch up with their quarry, riding through the day, stopping only briefly to seek shade from the midday sun, and stopping for the night only when it becomes entirely too dark to track; waking when the first light of dawn brightens the sky.

“Hey,” Scorpia says. She spurs her camel to keep pace with Catra’s.

“What?” Catra asks.

“You’re smiling.”

Catra stops smiling. “I am?”

“You’re good at this,” Scorpia says. “The whole showmanship of leading a gang of outlaws? You’re a natural.”

“It’s nothing.”

“Don’t sell yourself short.”

* * *

The ‘Sky Needle’ is definitely of First-Ones’ origin; that much is evident from inspection alone. They walk around it; Glimmer takes off and does a sweep of the entire exterior. The top is flat, and the whole thing juts out at an angle.

“Is this really her spacecraft?” Glimmer asks.

“No,” Bow says. “Come look at this.”

He walks thirty paces back fro the Sky Needle, and holds up a screen.

Adora, Glimmer, Juliet, and Huntara all gather behind him to see. On the screen, where it covers the Sky Needle, is light. Bow pans the screen up the structure, capturing the silhouette of the top on the screen.

Then he pans downward, and some fifteen fathoms below the surface of the desert, the needle becomes part of something _much larger._ Three lozenge-like shapes put together, easily the size of a modest castle. The sky needle is one of several protrusions jutting out of one end, but elongated to reach above the surface.

“Holy shit,” Adora mutters.

“Yeah, we just need to get in,” Bow says. “It looks like the Sky Needle was intended to allow access even though the ship is buried. I’d say it might even be able to unearth itself without help.”

“Hey, while you figure that out, I’ll go scout the perimeter,” Huntara says. “Make sure nothing is going to creep up on us when we get ready to go inside, yeah?”

“Sounds good,” Adora says.

Huntara heads off across the sand, towards the ruins in the middle distance.

Juliet looks after her.

“Hey, is everything all-right?” Glimmer asks her. “You seem tense?”

“There was something off about how she said that,” Juliet says. “Something in her voice.”

“She _is_ a bit of an archaeologist herself,” Adora says. “Maybe she’s excited? Anyway, let’s crack this nut open!”

“I am _not_ blinking in there blind,” Glimmer says.

“No need!”

Adora heads up to the pylon itself. There’s no clear way to enter or exit, but from experience she knows that the First-Ones can make doors so flush with the frame you cannot see or feel them when closed.

Instead, she takes out her breaching tool. She places the small disc on the hull, and activates it. The device spins up, extends, and prepares to open a portal through to the other side.

Instead, it suddenly disengages from the hull, falling to the sand, inert.

“`Unauthorized breaching attempt.`”

From the sides of the pylon, a set of panels snap open, and under those, something unmistakably weapon-like. They pivot quickly on joints to target Adora, and their business ends glow menacingly.

Adora falls over backwards, landing on her rear. She shifts into She-Ra almost on instinct and brings her shield up.

“Adora!” Glimmer yells. Juliet holds her back. “Don’t blink there! It might set it off!”

“`Processing. Recognized: She-Ra.`”

A small panel opens, and a long flexible tentacle-like robot arm flops out; undulating and unfolding, then proceeds to creep across the sand to Adora, where it elevates like a cobra and holds out a round probe-like object.

“`Please exhale on the probe.`”

Tentatively, Adora leans forward and exhales on it.

“`Try again, please.`”

She does it again, more forcefully.

“`Processing. Genetic signature match: Adora. Welcome, Daughter of Mara.`”

The guns slide away, and a broad door opens.

“Holy shit!” Adora yells. “Guys! Come on!”

They all rush up to her and head for the door.

“`Unauthorized personnel detected. Please alter access permissions to allow boarding.`”

“Uh, permission granted on my authority?” Adora tries.

“`Please access the security subsystem in the control center to alter access permissions.`”

Adora turns to the others. “I’ll go do that as quickly as I can, but it might take a while. Wait for me, I won’t be long, I promise.”

“Are you sure you will be okay?” Glimmer asks.

“Yeah.”

Adora heads inside, and the doors close, leaving Glimmer, Bow, and Juliet standing in the sand.

* * *

The inside of the pylon turns out to be an elevator cabin, which descends smoothly for a long time.

Eventually it comes to a stop, and Adora steps out into small vestibule walled much the same as every other First-Ones’ structure she has ever seen. The walls of the room are lined with doorways, and two corridors lead away from the space.

“Which way to the control center?”

A glowing line in the floor lights up. Adora follows it down a curving corridor, passing through two sets of bulkhead doors. The lights fade on in front of her, and fade out behind her. Finally the corridor reaches its terminus, a large door, which slides away noiselessly, revealing an open space.

The walls of the room are all dark and glossy. The only illumination are provided by the faint glow of instruments lining the walls and two large consoles in the center of the room.

“`Welcome, Administrator Adora, She-Ra, to the Control Center of the Swift Wind.`”

Adora almost stumbles over a chair, as her eyes adjust the dark. A high-backed one, that glides away almost weightlessly from the collision.

Next she almost stumbles over a raised podium.

“Uh, lights?”

The room is lit up with a soft white glow.

Adora looks around with wonder. The chair she almost stumble over is one of many, and they don’t have any legs — they hover. Two large consoles, the raised podium, and indeed the curvature of the entire room, frame it as having a center-point.

Adora turns to see, and finds a throne-like seat.

Upon which lies the mummified remains of a person.

Startled, she draws one of her heat-ray pistols. But no, there is no danger. Only tragedy.

By the tattered remains of the clothes, disintegrating with age, Adora guesses this must be a woman. A golden diadem still crests her brow.

“Who is this?” Adora asks.

“`Query not recognized.`”

“There’s a corpse in the… Captain’s chair. Can you identify them?”

“`That is the earthly remains of Administrator Mara, She-Ra.`”

“ _Oh fuck,_ ” Adora whispers, covering her mouth. “Uh,” she says and clears her throat, which is suddenly tight, “can you send someone in here? She— she needs a proper burial.”

"`Fabrication of a coffin is underway. Household drone 'Emily' dispatched. Protocol dictates deaths must be reported and coroners are to perform an inspection. However, time passed since last official communications indicates headquarters may be compromised. Deferring to Administrator.`

“`Do you wish to send for a coroner?`”

“No.”

“`Acknowledged.`”

She shakes herself away from staring at the dessicated corpse. “This is Mara’s ship, correct?”

“`The former Captain and Owner of the Swift Wind was Administrator Mara, She-Ra. By will and testament, the Swift Wind is now yours.`”

“Did… Did she leave a message for me?”

“`Initiating message.`”

There’s a subtle shift in reality; as if everything is suddenly a little more dreamlike.

“Adora?”

Adora spins, so see a woman. Dark-brown hair, and olive skin, dressed in blue and black.

“Mara?” Adora asks.

She nods, biting her lip, visibly on the verge of tears.

Adora’s breath catches. “M— Mom?”

Mara nods again.

Adora throws her hat, shrugs off her pack, and runs to Mara, catching the woman in a fierce embrace. Suddenly, a longing for family Adora never knew she had hits her like a crushing wave.

Mara’s strong arms close around her, and everything in the world is right, for a brief, timeless instant.

“ _Mom!_ ” Adora sobs into Mara’s blouse.

“Oh, the cruel fates! My daughter!” she hugs Adora tight, and buries her nose in her hair. “ _I should have never let you go,_ ” she says.

They stand there; united for the first time in Adora’s memory. Mother and daughter.

* * *

Bow, Glimmer, and Juliet wait in the shadow of the Sky Needle until it becomes clear that Adora’s not going to come through any time soon. They return to camp, to slake their thirst and eat some lunch. More hardtack.

“You seem agitated, what is it?” Glimmer asks Juliet.

“I think Huntara ought to be back by now,” Juliet replies.

Now that Bow and Glimmer gives it some thought, it’s been about a half-hour since any of them saw the Orc.

“Do we split up and look for her?” Bow suggests. “She might be in trouble.”

“No. I’ll do a flyover if anything,” Glimmer says.

“Best case, sure,” Juliet says.

“Worst case?” Bow asks.

Juliet opens the big holster for her Yala-Zev, draws it, and runs the sling over her shoulder. “Worst case, we’re not alone.”

Bow rolls to his feet and grabs his bow, stringing it in one fluid motion, then hooking his quiver on his belt.

Glimmer holds out one hand, and her father’s staff pops into existence in it.

“Hey, what did I miss?” Huntara asks.

Casually, she approaches their little tent-covered camp site.

“We thought you were in trouble; we were about to go look for you.”

Huntara looks away. “Listen; you four seem like good, honorable people. The first I’ve seen in a while. But… I’m sorry. I have to do this.”

Juliet raises her gun. “ _What did you do?!_ ”

Then the sand around camp erupts, and forty guns are pointed at them.


	13. Hyperweapon, World-prison

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: battle deaths

Glimmer’s first instinct is to reach out and touch both Juliet and Bow. She tries to blink and… There’s a pain in her neck, something wrong with her head—

She collapses.

“Well, well, well, if it isn’t Arrow Boy, an unconscious Sparkles and… Wait, who are you?”

Catra comes sauntering in under their tent, sand rolling off her tan poncho.

Bow and Juliet pointedly don’t drop their weapons, but merely lower them.

“Huntara, thank you so much for your help.”

“Catra. I might have known,” Bow says. “But —” he looks around at the motley band of brigands “— mercenaries?”

“Oh no, Arrow Boy. I’m not with the Horde today,” Catra replies. “You haven’t heard, but I’m the new boss in town.”

Bow looks to Huntara, who looks nothing but tense. “She got to you.”

“Oh, you bet,” Catra says. “Turns out bwig stwong Huntara has a soft spot for her second-in-command. Speaking of, I made you a promise.”

Catra claps her hands twice, and two satyr women in desert garb bring forth Melissa. Huntara goes to her immediately, pulling her into a tight hug. “ _I’m sorry,_ ” Melissa half-whispers to Huntara. “Shut up,” Huntara bites back.

“What did you do to the Princess?!” Juliet asks.

“Oh nothing, just a dose of Scorpioni venom on a blowpipe arrow; see I left the house without the full support of the Horde military machine — terribly forgetful of me.”

“What do you want?” Juliet asks.

Catra blinks. She points to Glimmer. “Here’s a question: who pays more for her safe return? Her Mother, or the Horde? And I’m also just going to use you three as hostages to get Adora out of that tower thing.”

“That’s not the reason why you’re here,” Bow says.

Catra sneers. “I was sent here to _die,_ by which I mean that I’m here for _that,_ ” she points to the Sky Needle. “But if it wasn’t for the only dependable person in the entire Horde —” she juts a thumb over at Scorpia, who waves “— I’d have been dropped in Yelsie with only the clothes on my back. And I’m good, but I’ll readily admit I’m not _that_ good. Because of her, I only had to make _one_ corpse to get where I am now.”

“Good for you,” Bow says. “What, did the Horde kick you out for being too much of an asshole?” He kneels down next to glimmer, and waves Juliet down as well. “Help me with her,” he says.

“You know what, they did throw me out for being too much of an asshole! I—”

As soon as Bow and Juliet both touch Glimmer, they all vanish in a flicker of light.

“ _Fuck!_ ” Catra yells. “Find them! Fast!”

Scorpia comes up next to her. “Should we be worried about the Princess?”

“No. If she was in any shape to do so, she would already have begun killing. But still, good thinking to bring those ARW-PPE’s.”

Under their clothes, they are both wearing suits of magical protection, safeguarding them from among other things, Glimmer’s ability to make people fall over dead.

* * *

“But— the last thing I remember was making the impression for a personality construct before— _oh no._ ” Mara pulls back, holding Adora out by the shoulders. She looks around and spots the corpse.

She lets go of Adora, stumbling towards the podium, and falls to her knees on it. “ _No,_ ” she breathes. “I— I’m dead?”

“How are you here?” Adora asks.

“I–” she hangs her head, and begins muttering something. “ _I am the copy, not the original. I shall not want to be what I am not; I shall not mourn. That is the state of affairs; how it was, how it is, how it will be._ ”

Then she turns to Adora, suddenly looking severe. “We might not have much time, then, Adora. Listen, I am… A personality construct of Mara.”

Adora nods, wiping her eyes.

“Then I failed. And if I failed, that means the time-pocket collapsed on its own and deposited you and Razz safely, twelve-hundred years in the future — she raised you, and so you must already know what’s going on.”

“I don’t, actually. Razz didn’t raise me, as far as I know something went wrong, and we were separated, I was raised by… Someone else. I only met Razz a few months ago,” Adora says. “And it’s only been I think a thousand years?”

Mara winces.

“What is it?” Adora asks.

“The ship. I’m supplanting the main operating construct. It’s… Not good, and I can’t remain here for very long… Unless.”

Adora takes her hand. “Mara, no! Please! I need you.”

Mara blinks. “Oh, no I mean I can’t remain here for very long _at a time._ I don’t know how to manage the ship — I don’t even have the necessary implants. You’ll need to turn me off to let the custodian mind handle things, and since I don’t have proper integration, I won’t be able to retain any memories in-between. Next time you call on me, it’ll be the first time I meet you, again.”

“Oh no.”

“Yeah, I know, it’s suboptimal. We have a few minutes, for now; however, there is a straightforward if time-consuming technical solution to it: simply have the ship’s fabricator manufacture a proper substrate for me, and allocate an additional percent power to the internal unreality field.” She holds up a hand, and it flickers for a moment. “Yeah. Unstable, just as I thought.”

“So, if we have a few minutes, what do we talk about?” Adora asks.

Mara looks at Adora. “I need some data. How is our people doing?”

“Our people?” Adora asks. “You mean the First-Ones? —” Mara nods “— I’m it. Me and Razz. Everyone else is… Dead? But like, nine hundred years ago. First-Ones is archaeology.”

Mara looks down. “So they had to resort to that,” she mutters to herself. “Okay, it’s better than the alternatives. Have you found the— the other ship?”

Adora shakes her head. “This was the only blip on the tracker of this… Size.”

“So they didn’t make it…” Mara glances at the corpse behind her. “Like me… Or maybe worse. Shit! Okay, is there a new She-Ra?”

“Yeah. Me.”

Mara freezes. “Oh. Oh no. No. No-no-no, not _you_ —” She grabs Adora by the shoulders “— not my Adora! _Why?!_ ”

Adora puts a foot backward. “Light Hope says it’s because I’m the only viable candidate left!”

Mara’s face contorts with anger. “That _witch,_ ” she growls. “That two-faced, manipulative, _evil_ —” she takes a deep breath. “Sorry. Listen to me, Adora. Light Hope is your enemy. She’s clever, she’s charming, and she only ever wants to use you.”

“I know.”

“You know?”

Adora pushes Mara’s hands off her shoulder. “Yeah, I’m not an idiot. She’s all vague, and can’t talk about literally all the pertinent details of my ‘destiny.’ She sounds exactly like the worst of the Horde brass, who just _lies_ to their soldiers, making them commit war crimes.”

“Oh. Good. So, you probably want some answers. All the details are in my notes, so here’s the short version: there’s a weapon at the core of the planet, called the Heart of Etheria which has the power to destroy anything up to and including the entire universe. You — She-Ra — is the targeting mechanism, the keystone. If everyone else is dead, then Light Hope is the only one left with the privilege to aim it and pull the trigger. And she _will._ They had her try in my time; and she’ll doubtlessly try again.”

Adora recoils. “Why?! The First-Ones are all dead!”

“She has her directives. To destroy enemies of the First-Ones. I foiled her, saved the planet, saved the universe, and look where it got me.”

“But you did foil her,” Adora says.

“And now you will have to. By the way, who is this Horde?”

“Ah. Uh, short version: that would be the bad guys. It’s a war-mongering nation who are trying to conquer all of Etheria, under the direction of their leader, one named Hordak. As far as I know, he might not even be _from_ Etheria? His end goal is to open a portal and summon the off-world Horde forces which he was once a part of, and then they will come here and clean house where he failed.”

Mara’s eyes go wide. “Oh _shit._ He cannot be allowed to do that!”

“Oh, I agree, we’re trying to prevent him from—” Adora says, interrupted.

“—opening a portal.” Mara finishes. “He must _never_ succeed. I saved Etheria by using the… Weapon… To put us all in a little pocket of spacetime. Sola, Etheria, it’s moons. To keep us safe from any off-world First-Ones, I— one second, I need a visual aid.”

She runs over to a console, grabs a tablet screen, and runs back. She dusts it off, and pings the screen with a single finger. Speedily she navigates through menus to a drawing surface.

She draws a circle, “Sola,” then a smaller one next to it, “Etheria. That’s where we are. I’ll omit the moons,” then she draws a circle around both. “This is project Despondos, in my notes. It’s a self-contained self-stabilizing bubble of spacetime, inaccessible from the larger universe by means of regular motion. However —” she draws a line passing through the circumference of the circle “— a wormhole portal can still cross it.”

She eases the wormhole. Then she draws a second circle around all of it. “So actually we’re two levels deep. A bubble within a bubble. And between them —” she fills the space with scribbles “— I put the nastiest stuff I can think of.”

“Which is?”

“Magic. An unreality field, outside category. Well, if you extend the categorization system in the obvious manner, it’d be a category eleven.”

Adora doesn’t know what that is.

“What’s allowing me to manifest inside the ship right now is a category one field. Light Hope controls the entire internal layout and topology of the Crystal Castle with a category two. A category one-half is what most archmage use to cast spells. Anything above three is considered to dangerous to embody; the scale goes up to six.”

“So if he opens a portal..?” Adora says.

Mara shakes her head. "He’s not going to be able to. The boundary is corrupted by the unreality field on the other side. Without a proper lensing device, a simple portal engine will never be able to cross it; the portal formation sequence will simply fail.

“Should he manage to make a proper lensing device… We can only hope he will notice that the readings are off. In order to escape, he will need to bridge both boundaries in a single wormhole, which increases the power requirements _super-exponentially._ And nobody can supply that much power. The only way to break out is, ironically, to use the Heart of Etheria.”

“And what if he opens it anyway, into the nasty stuff?”

“If that happens Etheria is going to cease to exist. Maybe all of it, past, present, and future. I can’t even begin to theorize. But anyone with a brain will realize the readings are wildly off, and opening such a portal would be incredibly dangerous.”

“Oh. Well, I wouldn’t put that kind of stupidity past anyone in the Horde, so we need to stop him, like, right now,” Adora says.

“I was afraid that might be the case.”

“There’s one more problem,” Adora continues.

“We’re running out of time, speak quickly,” Mara says.

“They deployed a weapon against me, a piece of First-Ones tech, which infected the Aegis of Power and turned it into a giant monster; it also made me go temporarily insane.”

“Ah, yes, that would be an energy virus. We made those, but they proved too dangerous to use. Sorry.”

“Why did it make me go insane?”

“Because that is how Light Hope gets you. The Aegis is not a weapon, it is a shackle. It’s made to Control She-Ra and limit her power.”

“Oh.”

Mara leans forward and kisses Adora on the forehead. “That’s it, we’re out of t—”

She pops like a soap bubble.

The door opens and a three-legged thing with a spherical body comes in; behind it hovers a brushed metal coffin.

* * *

Adora steadies herself while ‘Emily’ gingerly lifts Mara’s remains into the coffin with a set of compliant tentacular arms, then proceeds to clean up the remaining dust.

“Swift Wind. Custodian,” she says.

“`Yes?`”

“How did Mara’s… Remains… End up so dessicated.”

“`Climate control is set to two percent relative humidity. Last change to these settings were performed by Administrator Mara.`”

She did it to herself. “Increase relative humidity to fifty percent.” It is uncomfortably arid in here.

“`Affirmative.`”

“I need to create and authorize new users. Outside the ship, in the nearby ruins are four individuals, a human, a half-angel, an elf, and an orc. I need all of them to be able to board the ship.”

“`Outside the ship are forty-six individuals. Please disambiguate.`”

It takes Adora an embarrassingly long moment to realize.

Then she’s running for the door.

* * *

Bow and Juliet both stumble for a heartbeat, getting their bearings; they’ve moved somewhere to wards the very center of the ruined city. Somehow, she has placed them already in a fairly secure location with lots of good cover.

A trickle of blood comes from Glimmer’s nose.

“Shit,” Juliet says plainly. “Which direction is the camp?”

Bow, his sense of direction honed to a fine point over many years of blinking with Glimmer, points.

“I should have _known,_ ” she hisses. “Did you see the camels?”

“Maybe?”

“They were eating something; we hadn’t fed them. Treats. To make them complacent.”

They haul Glimmer’s unconscious form up to sit against a block weathered sandstone and both take up positions at the edge of it.

“So. Two against, what… Forty?” Juliet says.

“Yeah. Piece of cake,” Bow notes.

The first of the robber band enters their line of sight.

“I’ve got a clear shot,” Juliet says.

“Hold,” Bow says, knocking an arrow.

It’s a caniform man, holding a crossbow. He stops to smell the wind. Turns towards their location, and starts walking, weapon at the ready.

Bow takes three steps back from cover, turns his bow horizontal, draws an arrow against the string at an angle, and lets it fly. The shaft curves around the stone block, and the ensuing yelp tells him he hit his mark.

“Did you just _curve_ an arrow?”

“It’s easier than you think.”

Ten heartbeats later, the robbers trickle in, finding their fallen comrade. “ _Winston’s been hit! They’re over here somewhere!_ ”

Juliet leans out of cover and lets her sub-carbine ring out a few shots, the precise armor-piercing fire setting. The highly-penetrating rounds rip through cloth and flesh, soaking the blood of another three robbers into the sand.

“ _They’re over there!_ ”

There’s the report of musket fire, and a bullet impacts the sandstone.

Bow pops out of cover just long enough to curve another arrow, darting above the cover of the woman who just took a shot at them, and striking true.

And then they are beset by the entire remaining band of robbers.

A staggered salvo of fire hits their cover, and it becomes a game of picking off flanking attempts.

There’s a dip in the action every time the enemy hunkers down to reload their muzzle-loaders. Juliet uses that opportunity to harass with suppressive fire in full-auto.

Bow picks off breakaway teams — on the handle of his bow sits a small rod protruding forward, on which he’s mounted a mirror; good for targeting those curved shots.

Another volley begins.

“How many?” Bow yells, letting another two arrows fly in quick succession, missing one and following up with a third that hits home.

“I don’t know, six?” Juliet points her Yala-Zev around the corner and aims through the strange mirage-like optical sights without even poking her head out of cover.

“For me that makes seven!” Bow replies.

Then a shadow glides over their cover stone block, and lands over Glimmer. Bow spins faster than he ever has, bringing his bow to bear.

The limb of his bow is struck by the elongated hilt of Catra’s stolen sword, throwing his aim. She spins the blade around the center of gravity, switching hand and whipping the tip of the blade at Juliet, who brings her gun up to block; the blade biting deep into the wood and sticking.

Catra lets go, dances back towards bow and kicks him in the chest, knocking the wind out of him; throwing the dust off his white coat, and him into the sand.

Juliet drops her gun and switches to her side arm, letting a ray of searing heat fly, which Catra ducks around, closing the distance and disarming Juliet in an eye-blink, breaking her finger in the trigger-guard of the sleek, brass gun.

She draws two revolvers, pointing one at either. “Surrender or die.”

Glimmer groggily and ineffectually punches Catra in the back of the leg. “ _F’ck-off._ ”

“Sparkles, if you draw a knife or something, I’ll shoot your boyfriend and… Bodyguard.”

“ _N’t m’ boyfrn,_ ” she mumbles.

“Glimmer, please,” Bow says.

“ _I g’t your f’ckn hand inna jar ’t home,_ ” Glimmer mumbles. “ _Wan— wanna help me c’mplete the set, a— asshole?_ ”

Catra kicks Glimmer in the face. She collapses in the sand.

“ _Ow._ ”

“For fuck’s sake,” Juliet groans. “Okay, we surrender.”

* * *

Adora reaches the elevator to the Sky Needle. “Show me what’s going on outside!”

On the wall of the elevator car, a screen opens up. It shows the sands of the desert, and the ruins in the distance. Emerging from the ruins is a large number of people, dressed in tan desert gear, led by someone Adora recognize just by her movements: Catra.

Her heart sinks, as she sees — is that Princess Scorpia? — come after, carrying Glimmer, as is apparent by her wings. Two people with hands tied behind their backs must be Bow and Juliet.

Mind racing, she starts running back to the control room. Out of breath, she reaches it. “Show me the exterior view of the sky needle!”

The dark glossy walls become a true-to-life view of the outside desert. Catra and her people, with Glimmer, Bow, and Juliet as prisoners, have almost reached the Sky Needle.

“I need to create those new users!”

“`Acknowledged.`”

“That man —” she points to Bow “— is named Bow; that woman —” she points at Juliet “— is named Juliet; and the one being carried there —” she points at Glimmer “— is named Glimmer. They are all authorized to board the ship, Glimmer and Bow can have the same level of permissions I have.”

“`Processing. Scanning for protraits... Done. New users created.`”

“Portraits?”

Three portraits pop up on the screen. Bow, Glimmer, Juliet. Adora breathes a sigh of relief.

Meanwhile, Catra reaches the Sky Needle. Bow and Juliet stand beside her, and she’s holding a gun.

“ _Hey Adora!_ ” she calls out.

Adora grinds her teeth. “Ship? Deploy external weapons, aim at that one —” she points at Catra “— but don’t fire.”

Catra’s reaction is slight; remarkably composed.

Adora steps up to one of the two consoles. “Transmit my voice out there, while I push a button on this console,” Adora says.

One of the buttons light up. Adora pushes it. “Hello Catra.”

* * *

Catra is thoroughly unnerved by the four large cannons pointed at her.

“— _Sorry about the big guns. I just wanted you to know that I’m going to reduce you to fucking ash if you touch a hair on my friends’ heads,_ ” Adora’s voice says.

“Well; it seems we’re at an impasse,” Catra calls back. “Look. How about a trade?”

“ _A trade?_ ”

“You; in exchange for your friends.”

There’s a long pause. “ _Acceptable. I’ll be with you in a few minutes. This place is enormous. It’s a bit of a walk back up to the surface from where I am right now._ ”

The guns fold back into the Sky Needle.

“Sure. I can wait,” Catra says.

And she does.

“Hey boss?” one of Catra’s cronies say. A lizardman who looks like he might be Tung Lashor’s brother. “Isn’t this purple sparkly winged one a Princess and one of the ones we want to ransom away?”

“Scorpia?” Catra says.

“Yes, Wildcat?”

“If that guy opens his mouth again, kill him.”

“Yes, Wildcat.” Scorpia turns, shooting a glare at the guy.

Finally, the door opens, and Adora steps out, hands up. “Here I am. Let them go.”

“You know, you really _are_ stupid,” Catra says, and points her gun at Adora.

“Ship?” Adora says. “Guns, please.”

There’s a whirr and a hum, and the four cannons emerge once more.

“I think we had a deal, Catra,” Adora says.

Catra lowers the revolver. “Good to see you haven’t lost your edge. All right, free the Arrow Boy, and let him have the princess.”

The young boy who used to be Tung Lashor’s sword-bearer, darts up to Bow and unties his hands, then Scorpia foists Glimmer’s unconscious form off on him.

They walk over the short stretch of sand, to Adora.

“The ship is yours. It’s smart; well, smart- _er_. I suggest trying to fly it back to Brightmoon, and if that is impossible, you can avail yourself of the arsenal or something. Oh, and the infirmary; there’s probably an infirmary. It’s all in working order. Don’t try to come rescue me.”

“Thanks,” Bow says. “I’d tell you to stay safe, but…”

“Yeah.” Adora pats him on his shoulder.

They go into the elevator, the doors slide shut…

Adora looks to the side, spotting Huntara and Melissa — who she doesn’t know. But from her protective body language, it’s clear Catra did _something_ related the troll woman.

“Hey, Huntara.”

“Yeah?” Huntara says.

“She got to you too, huh?”

“Sorry, girl.”

“Yeah. Go fuck yourself. I trusted you — we could have helped you.”

Huntara turns away.

Adora turns to Catra. “So. You got me.” She glances around, at the rag-tag group of robbers. “Is this what passes for Horde Operatives these days? The war has really taken its toll on recruitment.” She holds out her hands, and Scorpia steps forward to bind them.

Catra laughs. “Oh, Adora; I’m not _with_ the Horde anymore. I was deemed to be a ‘liability’ by Supreme Chancellor Hordak, and sentenced into exile. Scorpia, disarm her while you’re at it. Where’s that shapeshifting multi-weapon of She-Ra’s?”

“Belt pouch. The metal one,” Adora supplies.

Scorpia takes off a glove and just cuts Adora’s belt off. “Hey, Catra, this looks like an ARW container.”

“What? Why?” Catra asks Adora.

“After what happened up north, can you fault me for taking precautions?”

“I guess not.” She turns to her men. “Let’s round up the wounded, save who we can, and get back to Yelsie! We’ve got a princess to fence!”


	14. Old Times, New Plans

“You can lower your gun,” Adora says.

“Not until you transform and drop whatever weapons She-Ra might be carrying,” Catra says.

“Catra?” someone yells, a big lizardwoman. “What do we do with their camels?”

“Hold them for now, we’ll sort it out when we get back!” Catra yells back.

Adora closes her eyes, and transforms. The flash of light is eye-catching, and She-Ra draws a lot of stares. She is dressed in much the same battle-dress as Catra has seen her the other times: helmet, light slim-fitting body armor, embellished with protruding shoulder pads and a calf-length skirt that opens in the front; hair flowing free through a ponytail-port, somehow. All white.

The only weapon she is carrying is the shield. She-Ra takes it off, and hands it to Scorpia.

“That’s _really_ heavy,” Scorpia notes.

“Yes. It is also _important_ to me, Princess Scorpia. If anything happens to it, I will be _displeased._ ”

Scorpia takes an involuntary step backwards. She-Ra is half a head taller, and more intimidating than she has any right to be, even as she is holding out her hands to be bound.

“You can shift back now,” Catra says.

“I don’t think I will,” Adora replies.

“I’ll shoot you.”

She-Ra pointedly glances back at the Sky Needle, then back. “Go ahead.”

Catra sneers and holsters her pistol.

“Now if you don’t mind, I’d like to tend to the wounded.”

“Why?!”

She-Ra holds up a hand, and a soft white glow envelops it. “I have the power to heal.”

Catra ponders the dilemma: on one hand, she doesn’t want her precious personnel to die of their wounds, but on the other hand, this might endear She-Ra to them and put her hold of them in jeopardy.

“Fine.” Catra turns and points out one of her men. “Show her to the wounded. Keep her at gunpoint at all times. If that big tower over there does anything funny, shoot her.”

The man shoulders his musket, and points it at Adora. “This way,” he grumbles.

* * *

The aftermath of the brief battle between Bow and Juliet, and all of Catra’s goons, has Adora a little bit proud. Ten incapacitated, three dead. Forty against _two._ The ten wounded robbers are lying in the sand, side-by-side. Six of them have arrow-shafts jutting out of them somewhere. A single faun woman is tending to them.

“Triage?” Adora asks her.

“What?”

“Who is most in need of assistance?”

She looks Adora up and down. “Lady, I’m fleecing this guy for his pocket watch,” she says and holds it up.

Adora serves her a kick to the shoulder that sends her sprawling. Then she looks at the wounded. The arrow-wounds are all to the torso or thighs, but none of them seem to have struck heart, lungs, or arteries; and the shafts will be plugging the blood flow. The bullet wounds are center-mass also, and shallower — all four inflicted with the automatic fire setting — but the ‘hard-light’ bullets of the Yala-Zev dissipate into nothing after impact, leaving open bleeds.

Adora tends to those first. Calling the light is troubling in these times, but gives her a reprieve to ponder happier moments. In particular her mind drifts to Little Adora, and that makes it a lot easier.

The fourth and last of the bullet-wounded expires before she can stabilize the third. She manages to save three of Bow’s victims. None of them are ready to get back to robbing, but they will all survive the camel ride back to Yelsie.

“Hey,” one of them says to her. A minotaur woman — one of the arrow-wound victims. “Are you some kind of goddess?”

“I’m She-Ra. You’re delirious from blood loss.”

“Oh. She-Ra,” she repeats dreamily.

Adora stands and turns to the man keeping her at gunpoint. He is human, and his skin is as dark as the moonless night sky. “These people need water.”

“They aren’t getting my water rations,” he says. “And I’m not helping you, I’m supposed to shoot you if that big tower does something.”

“Yeah, I heard.” Adora turns towards the group of robbers. Someone has fetched the camels, and most of them are busy mounting up. “Hey!” she calls out. “Someone bring over the camels of these guys.”

“Why?” someone yells back.

Adora sets out walking, and the man with the musket follows her. She comes up to the one who yelled — another human, a fair-skinned woman bearing the brunt of sunburn plainly on her skin.

“You asked me why,” Adora says.

“Yeah. Why should we listen to you? You’re our prisoner.”

“Correction: I’m your hostage.” Adora turns to the guy with the musket. “Are you going to shoot me if I kick some sense into this imbecile?”

“Nope.”

Adora turns back. “Bring. The. Camels. It’s your duty now to see to it that the six injured guys over there —” she points with her bound hands “— get their water rations. If I find out that hasn’t happened, I’ll kick your teeth in.”

That gets her moving.

Catra comes over. “Hey, what’s this about?”

“How can you handle these people?” Adora says. “They’ve no sense of loyalty, or sense at all, really.”

“You get used to it. Issuing threats with every order,” Catra says. “Let’s get you a camel.”

“What about us?”

Catra and Adora both turn.

It’s Huntara and Melissa. They are standing a little away.

“What about you?” Catra says.

“Seeing as you’re the new boss in town,” Huntara says. “Well, I’m the best at travelling the desert.”

“Huntara, you betrayed people who had your trust,” Catra says. “What makes you think I want you in my employ?”

Huntara frowns.

“You can try your luck with the people who went in there,” she says and points to the Sky Needle. “The ones you betrayed.”

Then Catra waves over the sword-bearer boy, who comes with two camels. Catra mounts one, and Adora mounts the other, looking over her shoulder at Huntara. The camel train starts moving, and the robber band starts the trek back to Yelsie.

“Why didn’t you say anything?” Catra asks. “I thought you’d object to me just leaving two people to die in the desert.”

“I’m leaving it up to Glimmer and the others.”

Catra looks at Adora. “Interesting.”

They ride for a bit in silence. The afternoon sun is beating down on Catra’s hat and She-Ra’s helmet.

“So. Exile?” Adora asks.

“Yup.”

“Why?”

“On the way back from the Northern Reach, after you fucking decimated my entire platoon, we ran into a Candilan ship — now the Ice Breaker we were with was a civilian ship, so the Captain had no choice but to let them board us,” Catra explains.

“Shit, how did you get out of that?”

“I got Entrapta — that’s the Chancellors wife, the First Lady, remember from the Gala?”

“I remember.”

“I got her to make a super-weapon, that shot a beam of fire, and then I sank the Candilan ship.”

Adora ponders this for a moment. “That’s a relatively minor offense, what unlawful naval belligerence?”

“Yeah, that’s what they sentenced me for, officially.”

“And unofficially?”

“I put Hordak’s wife in danger. He’s the Supreme Chancellor now, by the way. Usurped the whole government basically over the span of a week; six-star general, power to overrule the high court, sent the whole parliament home.”

“Oh. I heard he recalled his diplomats in Brightmoon.”

“Yeah. Anyway, I was offered a sham deal: go here instead of Beast Island, and retrieve the First-Ones’ artifact, in exchange for a full pardon.”

“But… But you’re not bringing it back”

“Yeah, duh.”

“So what? You’re not going back?”

“No, I am; I’m bringing you, and you’ll tell them all about what that First-Ones’ artifact is.”

“And if I don’t?”

“Then I’ll be sent to Beast Island, to die.”

“I’ve half a mind to let you.”

“I know.”

* * *

Huntara and Melissa look after the camel train until it passes out of sight, beyond the ruins. The wind picks up and Melissa re-ties her headscarf. Huntara pushes her hat on better.

“Let’s go,” Huntara says.

Together they head over to the Sky Needle, and Huntara knocks on the smooth exterior.

A while goes by, then the transmitted voice of Juliet comes through from an unseen source. “ _What?_ ”

“Can we come in?” Huntara asks. “They took our camels and water.”

“ _You know what? No. You’re a security liability I am not willing to take on at this point._ ”

“But we’ll die out here,” Melissa protests.

“ _Huntara can live with her choices. You, I’m willing to take in._ ”

“But that’s cruel!” Melissa protests.

“ _At the risk of stating the obvious, this is the Crimson Wastes. So—_ ”

“ _What the fuck kind of hard-ball are you playing with these people, Juliet!_ ” Bow says. “ _Huntara? Troll Woman I don’t know? I’m… Disappointed, but I’m willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. However, if you ever betray our trust again, I’ll put an arrow through your eye socket. Understood?_ ”

“Duly noted.”

The elevator doors open.

* * *

Juliet stands with her arms crossed. Bow paces back and forth in the control room. Glimmer is lying down the hall in the infirmary.

“So. What do we do now?” Juliet asks.

“I’m thinking.”

“No, I mean about Huntara and the troll.”

“Give them enough water to make it back to Yelsie and send them on their way. Go fetch them, I need some time to think.”

Juliet undoes the strap on her hip holster — the on-board small arms arsenal has generously provided her with a very sleek pistol that functions much the same as a Yala-Zev.

Bow keeps pacing, and a few minutes later Juliet returns with Huntara and Melissa.

“Thank you,” Huntara says.

“Don’t mention it,” Bow says. Then he goes back to pacing.

“So…” Melissa says.

Bow groans, and lets himself slump into one of the hovering chairs. “I don’t know. This is a real shit-show. I’ve lost all my trackers, we’ve got no camels, Glimmer will be out for at least a day, and Adora just left as a willing hostage.”

“Well, if we travel light, we could carry enough water to get back to Yelsie,” Melissa says.

“To a swift death,” Huntara says. “That Catra character is dangerous.”

“Um, disembodied custodian voice? Ship?” Bow asks.

“`Yes, Administrator Bow?`”

“The First-Ones that used to use this… Place, did they have some animals to ride or a self-driving cart, or something?”

“`The vehicle bay contains several means of conveyance that fits in the cargo elevator of the surface access point.`”

“Isn’t—” Huntara says. “Isn’t this a ship that sails in the sky? Was that what you said?”

Bow nods. “Unfortunately it does not sail in sand. That was the first thing I asked about. This thing is staying put for the foreseeable future.”

“Hm. Look, Melissa and I are not going back to Yelsie, and I don’t think you are either.”

“No,” Bow says. “We’re going back to Candila, to the Waygate. I’ll spend some time figuring out what the ship can do while Glimmer recovers.”

“Can we stay here?” Melissa asks.

Bow frowns. “Look, we’re not friends,” he says. “Or even allies. Huntara betrayed us, and because of her Adora is now in our enemy’s custody, and my best friend is unconscious in the infirmary.”

“Does this ship have a brig?” Huntara asks.

Melissa looks at her sharply.

“Maybe,” Bow says. “Ship, is there a brig?”

“`Yes. Currently all cells are unoccupied. Additionally the guest rooms can be re-purposed for prisoner accomodation.`”

“We are not staying in the brig, Huntara,” Melissa says.

“No. Just you.” Huntara replies. “I’m going back out.”

“You’re _not_ going after that Catra woman,” Melissa says, “they’ll kill you!”

“I’m not. I’m going into the desert.”

Melissa recoils from her. “No, Hunty, please; you can’t be serious! Not now!”

“What’s this about?” Bow asks.

“It’s a private matter,” Huntara says.

“It’s my wife’s kooky old-time Orcish religion. She’s convinced her ancestors can speak to her out in the desert, and they are telling her to seek something there. It’s insanity! You’re going to die out there, and I’ll be left here to mourn.”

“It’s not insanity, it’s _faith,_ Melissa!”

“This is because you are afraid of commitment, isn’t it? You’re trying to get away from me. Because I’m a liability; I’m your weakness.” Tears well up in her eyes.

“Melissa, listen. My ancestral home was wiped out; my bloodline was extinguished. My whole life, the desert — my homeland — has been beckoning me! And now this outsider” — she gestures to Bow — “comes along and tells me there’s a Runestone out there somewhere? One that appeared since the fall of the Magicat kingdom, and nobody knew about?”

“That’s why you wanted to know where it was,” Bow says.

“Melissa, I’m old enough to be your mother; if I die out there, I die chasing my life’s purpose, what I’ve always done. And you, you have time ahead of you. Even if I was your age, you’d outlive me.” She reaches out and wipes a tear away from Melissa’s cheek. “And if I come back… Who knows what wonders I will have found; I’ll come find you, and we’ll settle somewhere decent — Honeydew maybe — and I’ll grow old with you.”

Melissa pulls Huntara into a tight hug, and they stand there long enough that Bow and Juliet would start feeling out of place, if it wasn’t for their fatigue.

They pull away from each other. “Juliet?” Huntara says. “If I could have some water to bring; I’ll be on my way.”

“You don’t want a vehicle?” Bow asks.

“No, if I’m to follow the spirits, I find my legs are best.”

“Come with me,” Juliet says.

Melissa plants a kiss on Huntara’s cheek, and they share one last caress.

Bow sits up. “Hey Ship? Can you detect the location of the nearby Runestone?”

“`Yes.`”

“Can you give Huntara a bearing to follow?”

“`Yes. However, following a bearing across terrain is proven to be error-prone. I suggest equipping her with a preconfigured paracompass.`”

“Great, do that.”

“`Household drone 'Emily' dispatched.`”

“Tell her… Tell her it’s a parting gift from Melissa,” Bow says.

Melissa looks at him. “Thank you, sir.”

“Yeah. Call me Bow; or ‘Ranger’ if you want to be impersonal. Melissa? Are you going to cause any trouble, because I am _really_ not in the mood for any nonsense right now.” His hand drifts to rest on a bow and quiver of arrows lying on a hovering tray-table; crudely and quickly fabricated upon request just a few minutes ago.

“No. In fact, I need some time to think; my whole day-to-day life just got upended,” she replies.

“Fine. Ship, Melissa is our guest, show her to a guest room.”

“`Affirmative.`”

“And get me a freaking drink.”

* * *

“Hey, so,” Adora says and reverts to her human form.

“Hm?” Catra responds.

“Seeing as I have nowhere to run, and you took all my weapons… If I promise to cooperate, can I maybe get my hands untied?”

Catra doesn’t even think about it. She reaches into her boot, drawing the small dagger hidden there, and tosses it to Adora who deftly catches it and cuts the twine binding her wrists. She then tosses it back to Catra.

It’s not quite the mad dash back to Yelsie as it was to chase down Huntara; but close. They don’t have a lot of water with them.

On the evening stop, they do hold a little celebration: not only did they under their new leader capture an allegedly incredibly valuable hostage, but they also left Huntara for dead in the desert. Only a pedant would insist on seeing the corpse.

There’s no wood for a fire, so they huddle up, wrapped in their cloaks, leaning against their camels, with only an oil lamp for light. The hardtack Adora is offered is somehow worse than what she had on the way out.

“How’s Lonnie, Kyle, and Rogelio doing?” Adora asks.

“Oh, they’re doing well, I think. Lonnie’s been promoted to officer ranks; had her as my Adjutant for a while. Kyle’s a proper technical specialist and Rogelio is a driver and pilot. They’re in a good place.”

“Gladd to hear it. How… How is his eye?”

“Entrapta was able to make him a new one. He’s peachy.”

“Oh good.”

“Yeah.”

They sit in silence for a while. What happened in the arctic is not kosher conversation.

“What’s on your mind?” Catra says. “You’re doing that thinky-face of yours.”

“No, it’s… Did you ever think about using army resources to find your birth parents?” Adora asks.

Talking about the old days. Simpler times. Before they became mortal enemies.

“No. Fuck ’em,” Catra says.

“Well, I did. Sometimes. You know, passing fancy.”

“What makes you bring it up now?” Catra asks.

“I… I found them.”

“ _What?!_ Who?”

Adora snickers. “It’s a funny story. Apparently I’m a First-One, and I was born a thousand years ago and sent forward in time through a portal.”

Catra narrows her eyes. “So, you’re still an Orphan?”

Adora shrugs. “My grandmother is alive. She went with me, and was supposed to raise me, but something went wrong, and I landed in the Hordelands.”

“And… Your mom and dad?” Catra asks tentatively.

“Mom. I don’t think I have a real dad. She was the previous She-Ra. That big pylon back there is her spacecraft. She’s long dead, but like, her ghost lingers? We had a chat.”

Catra looks away. “Oh.”

“Yeah. I… I can recommend it; not wholeheartedly, but if you’ve ever felt—”

“No. Let’s talk about something else,” Catra says.

“Okay.”

* * *

Glimmer comes to in a comfortable bed, with a splitting headache. The lighting is pleasantly dimmed.

She sits up, and by the throbbing in her nose immediately regrets it. Taking a look around, she finds herself in an infirmary — going by the row of beds.

“`Hello, Administrator Glimmer. How do you feel?`” a disembodied voice says.

“My head hurts.”

“`On the table next to you is a dose of mild analgesic for the pain, in electrolyte solution for your dehydration. Beware the bitter taste.`”

It’s in a cup, seemingly made of cardstock. Glimmer drinks it, and indeed it’s unpleasant. She lies back down, and dozes off a bit.

“Hey.”

She sits up, and this time it’s much more bearable. Bow is standing in the doorway.

“Hey,” she says. “How long was I out?”

“Half a day.”

“Adora?”

He shakes his head. “Captured.”

“Juliet?”

“She’s here with us.”

“And where is here?”

“Adora’s mom’s spacecraft.”

“Oh.”

Juliet appears with a tray. “Hello princess, brought you some food.”

“The drone servants can bring food, Juliet,” Bow says.

“Yes,” she replies, “But they can’t cook worth a damn. _I_ can.” She walks over to Glimmers bed and puts down the tray. A pleasant-smelling stew, with crudité and dark bread.

Glimmer digs right in. “What happened?”

“They got you with the Scorpioni woman’s venom on a blow-dart,” Juliet says, pointing to the dart on a surgical tray over yonder. “You managed to blink us both out of the ambush, and Bow and I took out about a third of their number before Catra got us in close quarters. Adora traded herself for us.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah,” Bow says. “The plan right now is that we pack as much First-Ones tech as we can into the largest of the ‘speeders’ they have in the vehicle bay, which will fit in the elevator. I’ve been taking lessons from the ship in how to steer it. It’s fast enough that we can reach Candila in less than a day. From there we need to come up with a plan to rescue Adora.”

Glimmer takes a spoonful of stew. “I think I know how we’ll do that. Let’s pack up; do you think a First-Ones ship like this has a place I can get a bath?”


	15. Who Cares, and Who Cares?

“ _Dire dunefish!_ ”

Adora and Catra jolt awake, to an all-consuming slithering sound. Like an avalanche of pebbles.

The camels are panicking, and men are running for a nearby rock formation.

Catra and Adora both know what a dire dunefish is, but only by description: terrifying, gigantic, worm-like, eats camels.

“Where’s my things?” Adora yells.

Catra runs for her camel, reaches into a saddle pouch, and pulls out Adora’s belt; she opens the small metal pouch, and tosses the ring inside to Adora.

Adora changes into She-Ra in a flash of light, and the ring unfurls mid-air into a mass of liquid silver, landing in her hands as a… Man portable auto-cannon? Catra’s having trouble classifying the weapon, just by looking.

She reaches into a different saddle pouch and grabs the three stick-bombs Scorpia brought with them.

Then they both run towards danger. The dire dunefish doesn’t stand a chance.

Catra and She-Ra stand over the corpse of it, smoke emanating from the enormous maw of the creature, and its hid pock-marked in craters of blown-away flesh.

She-Ra’s weapon reforms itself into a ring, and she tosses it to Catra; then reverts to Adora. “I’m going back to sleep.”

Catra looks at the small thing in the palm of her hand, puzzled.

* * *

Yelsie is much as they left it. A hive of scum and villainy, but less so today. The fishing fleet has come in with their catch, and the whole place is abuzz with auctions and fights and fish being gutted, hung to dry, salted, pickled, and cooked on the spot. The population of the place has more than doubled, and in the coming weeks, barrels of preserved seafood will go out to passing ships for the profits that ultimately keeps the town running.

Towing a dire dunefish carcass, even one decimated by heavy weapons fire, into town is but cause for more celebration. Many components of such a thing can be sold: its bone is stronger than steel and much lighter, its hide is bulletproof, its organs rich in medical substances.

Catra basks in it: riding into town, at the head of a column dragging the many-ton dead dire dunefish by means of twenty-five of their spare camels. Having had to give up her own mount to achieve that, Catra now rides a horseclaw: a bipedal man-sized bird with a broad beak. It suits her just fine, and the beast is much more respectful of her than any ungulate.

She’s hailed almost like a king. The fishmongers come to line the streets; there’s people whistling, whooping, applauding. Someone learns her name, and a chant begins.

“ _Cat-ra! Cat-ra! Cat-ra!_ ”

They head to the Ribcage, as the tavern is called. Catra, Scorpia, Adora, and virtually everyone else; rather than trying to fit inside they call the barkeep out and buy a cask of his ale.

Catra climbs onto the cask. “A toast,” she says. “To the memory of that oaf Tung Lashor. Thanks to his idiocy, you have me now! And thanks to me, Huntara is out of the picture for good!”

Scorpia doesn’t need to lead the chant: “ _Cat-ra! Cat-ra! Cat-ra!_ ”

She takes a bow. “A toast,” she continues, “to my… Frenemy, Adora. Who has been a most gracious hostage; whom we shall graciously ransom away, unharmed and possessed of her full dignity for her service: she saved the lives of six of us, and without her help, we would not have slain the dire dunefish!”

Adora raises her cup.

Catra hops down, and the bacchanal revelry begins.

“Hey, Wildcat, can I talk to you?” Scorpia asks.

“Sure, babe,” Catra says, taking her by the hand; she sets into a run.

Scorpia blushes. That is the first time in the half-year they have been dating that Catra has been so tender and affectionate in her speech; the first time she’s ever used an affective nickname.

“Can you believe this?” Catra asks. "This town? They love me! I’m a _king_ here! This was just what I needed — screw R&R! And when we come back, with She-Ra in tow, to tell Hordak what that desert pylon is and why it’s useless? Hordak will see me for what I’m worth, and I’ll be back on track!

“Maybe even more! Hell— I think Adora’s starting to see sense: that her Brightmoon friends are useless idiots and she never should have left me in the first place!”

Scorpia looks aside. “Hey, so. I’m just throwing out some ideas here, but… Counterpoint: we don’t go back?”

“What? Why?”

“Because you hate it there?”

“But I don’t—” Catra looks to the side.

“Hear me out:” Scorpia continues. “Within like, not even a week you’ve defeated two leaders or the notorious Crimson Wastes smuggler gangs, made yourself their leader, defeated a giant monster, and won the adoration of an entire town. This is the happiest I’ve ever seen you.”

She steps closer, and brushes a lock of hair behind Catra’s ear. “Scratch that, this is the first time I’ve seen you smile for more than a few minutes at a time. This is the first time I’ve ever seen you _relax_ and just let loose. You haven’t even asked me for a smoke in like a full day! You used to smoke a pack a day!”

Catra’s fingers go to her lips. “Man, I could really use one right now,” she mutters.

“You said it yourself: you’re a king, here. I mean, Hordak _did_ exile you, expecting you fully to just kick the bucket out here. I think we should just ransom Adora back to Salineas or something, and be done with it; use the money here.”

Scorpia lifts Catra’s face by the chin. “Forget Hordak. Forget Adora. Forget the Horde and the war. We could stay here, and just be happy.”

Catra smiles, and blushes. “That does sound nice. But Adora—”

“To be honest, I think she’s playing some angle,” Scorpia says. “Better get rid of her as quickly as possible.”

Catra frowns. “Yesterday, with the dunefish? She gave me back that shapeshifting weapon. She could have just escaped, right then and there.”

“But if she really is coming back, why hasn’t she said anything?” Scorpia asks.

“You know what; I’ll go ask her.” Catra rises to her tippy-toes — she’s been barefoot since they entered the desert, since feliform feet were really made for walking on sand — and kisses Scorpia on the cheek. “Good talk. I could use some more of your ideas.”

* * *

Catra comes over to Adora, who’s sitting a bit off to the side by herself, and sneering into her ale.

“Yeah, the taste never really grows on you,” Catra says.

Adora puts her mug aside. “What’s up?”

“So… There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you,” Catra says. “You’ve been awfully cooperative, and I’m starting to read things into it. Look: if you regret the whole abandoning-your-best-friend thing, and wants to turn coat again… You don’t need to apologize. Not to me at least. And if you come back to the fright zone with me, I’ll put in a good word with Hordak for you.”

Adora looks away. “Catra, I’m not coming back. I’m coming willingly because I need to speak to Hordak.”

“What? Why?”

“He’s working on opening a portal, to bring the rest of the Horde army through to Etheria and sweep aside any and all resistance. I— no— _we_ can’t let that happen.”

“Yeah, I know. He told me. Why would I be against more Horde, though?”

“Because what if this rest of the Horde army decides we’re all war criminals deserving of the gallows? What if they decide to just kill everyone? We can’t know. We can’t risk it.”

Catra giggles. “Never a dull moment with you, huh? It’ll just be the same shit we’re used to all over again; we weasel our way in, climb the ranks until we’re at the top, and then we rule the world!”

“You don’t understand, we’ll all lose if Hordak uses his portal machine—” Adora bites her tongue; lest she reveal too much. “Look, don’t believe me: Mara, the previous She-Ra, my mother; she said that opening a portal will endanger _everyone_ in ways we can’t even comprehend. There are things Hordak doesn’t know about Etheria.”

“Man, you listen to anything these weird mystical destiny people of yours tell you. Your long dead mother, that ‘Light Hope’ in the woods… Besides, how do _you_ know what Hordak’s up to?”

“Shadow Weaver told me. We know all about Hordak’s master plan.”

“ _Shadow Weaver_ told you?” Catra says slowly. She turns in her seat to face Adora. “How _exactly_ did Shadow Weaver tell you? Last I heard she was going back to Mystacor to die.”

“You don’t know?”

Catra’s neck hair stands on end and a terrible realization begins to form in the back of her mind. She slams a fist on the table between them. “ _How?!_ ”

“Catra, Shadow Weaver defected. She’s in Brightmoon. I healed her illness, and she’s been cooperating ever since.”

Catra stands, abruptly.

“Catra?” Adora asks.

“Shadow Weaver left me,” she says. Then she turns and glares at Adora. “For _you._ ”

“Catra, no; I know what you’re thinking, it’s not like that—” Adora protests.

“After every betrayal you heaped on us, after _everything_ I did for her, she still turns around and _spits in my face,_ ” Catra says almost serenely.

Then she walks into the crowd.

* * *

Scorpia steps in front of her. “Whoa, there, leaving already?”

Catra looks up at her, tears on the verge of welling up in her eyes.

“Catra, are you okay?”

Catra steps around her, and continues walking.

“Catra, babe, talk to me; is it something I did?”

Catra reaches their camels, and starts digging through Scorpia’s stuff, finding the hand-crank-driven transmitter, antenna, hammer, and headset that comprises the portable radio telegraph Scorpia brought.

“We’re going back,” Catra says. “We are going to help Hordak open a portal. And we are going to _win._ ”

Scorpia takes the hammer and headset. “Your hands are shaking too much, let me.”

Catra takes the hand crank and begins cranking.

> DE MT6112 NV LT SCORPIA CQ  
>  REQ EVAC BY FLYBOAT IN YELSIE FOR VALUBL HUMINT & POW STOP  
>  K

Scorpia waits for a few minutes, then repeats the message. Then the reply comes:

> DE CAS41 ENS MIKE CFM R WILL RELAY TO NAVCOM K

Scorpia finishing transcribing the message, and gives Catra a thumbs up.

> R THANKS K AR CL

Then she flicks off the switch. “Okay. They’re coming for us. The craft that took us here has gone across the wastes to land at the Inner Sea Naval Base, rather than go the long way around past Middle Seas. It’ll only be… Eight hours.”

“Go secure the prisoner,” Catra mutters, resting her face in her hands.

* * *

Adora hasn’t moved from where Catra found her.

“Hey, you, Adora,” Scorpia says. “Come with me.”

Adora rises from her seat, and follows Scorpia through the crowd. “What now?”

“I’m going to have to insist you stay in a holding cell in the gaol. An aircraft is going to come pick us up in eight-hours time.”

“Oh,” Adora says.

Scorpia doesn’t say another word until they reach the squat brick building with iron bars over the windows. Inside is nobody: not a desk, not a sheriff. Just cells.

Scorpia opens one of them and shows Adora in, then closes the door behind her, and turns the key.

“What did you say to her?” Scorpia asks.

“Pardon?”

“Catra was in a good mood just half an hour ago, then she goes and talks to you, and now… Now she’s in the _worst_ mood! What did you say to her!?” Scorpia yells, gripping the bars with both hands.

“I just told her the truth!”

Scorpia rubs the bridge of her nose with one hand. “Gosh, I see why she’s friends with you. You’re even dumber, bigger, and stronger, than I am.”

“Hey!”

“Don’t you get it, Adora? Catra was about to leave the Horde behind. You could have had your stupid war with Hordak without her in it! I was _this_ —” she gestures "— close to getting her to just stay in Yelsie; tiny Yelsie with no strategic importance at _all._ Stay here with… With me. Until it all blows over, maybe.

“But then you just cocked it up. Tore up her old wounds. Now she’s back in it with a vengeance, out for blood. Whatever you said to her, I’ve never seen her this full of anger.”

Adora looks away. “Sorry.”

“Sorry ain’t going to cut it, Adora.”

Scorpia turns around and slumps against the bars, sliding down to sit; her spinal carapace grinding against the metal.

“You know, when you two are not trying to kill each other, you can tell there’s a real bond between the two of you,” Scorpia says.

Adora comes over to the bars and sits down, on the opposite side, next to Scorpia. “What do you mean?”

Scorpia takes off her gloves and flexes her aching pincers; she’s had the gloves on for too long. “You know her really well; I— I guess I’m asking you for advice?”

“Oh,” Adora says. “Well, I… Truth is, I never really knew how to help her. I never really had the chance. We— Growing up was tough, is what I’m saying. Between going from one orphanage to the next, and Shadow Weaver’s efforts at disciplining us.”

Adora leans her head against the bars. “I guess I was busy looking out for both of us; too busy to actually help.”

“Oh,” Scorpia says.

“If there’s one thing,” Adora says. “It’s something I heard from a very wise woman,” Adora channels her best impression of Queen Angella: “With broken people, to heal them, you must show them kindness. Not _give_ them kindness, _show_ them.”

Scorpia chuckles. “Who said that?”

“The Queen. Of Brightmoon,” Adora clarifies. “And before you say anything; she’s like, three hundred years old. She’s healed more broken people than you or I have ever met. That’s _also_ a quote.”

Scorpia stands up. “Get some rest. An aircraft is coming to pick us up in a couple of hours.”

“Do you still have my shield?”

“Yeah. Why the shield? You’re not worried about that shape-shifting weapon thing?”

“It was made by one of my friends; who died because of me.”

“Condolences.”

“Catra shot her.”

“Oh.”

* * *

The speeder is a sleek thing the size of a horse carriage. When not in use, it folds up just enough to push it down the hallway of the ship. Out in the desert sands, it unfolds its four leg-like hover engines and rises to hovering at waist-height over the sand. The cabin silhouette is oblately ovoid, like a squished egg; pointed towards the front, rounded towards the rear.

“Are you going to be okay staying here?” Bow asks Melissa.

“Yeah. Huntara is going to want to return here… If she ever does.”

“ _When_ she does,” Bow corrects. “It’s going to be lonely.”

“I can always what was the term ‘call’ you? And if I need to, I can take one of the single-seat vehicles out of here. Until then, Swift Wind has a living face to help out. I think the Custodian likes me? It’s hard to tell.”

Bow gives her his hand, and they shake.

“One thing;” Melissa continues. “This Adora woman; why didn’t she just leave you a note, telling you what she was planning?”

“Hm?” Bow says,

“You spent all day talking about it — not that I was eavesdropping.”

“She wouldn’t think to,” Glimmer says. “She’s not good with writing and reading.”

“Oh,” Melissa says. “Then why not make a recording? _I’ve_ made a recording. It’s easy.”

“If you don’t think to write a note, you wouldn’t think to record a note either,” Glimmer reasons.

“Oh. That’s unfortunate.”

“Yeah. Bow?”

Bow climbs aboard, and seats himself in the front, behind the steering interface. Juliet rides shotgun, and Glimmer sit in the back — the only place where her wings will fit. The craft has no dedicated weapons; much as Juliet wishes it had. They’ve packed the trunk full of gear, weapons, and rations.

Bow takes hold of the steering bars; it’s a hybrid system that also detects user intentionality, like the heat-ray pistols. He nudges it smartly forwards, and the whole vehicle smoothly accelerates to speeds Glimmer can only reach in a good dive.

Bow only just has time to see Melissa wave goodbye in the rear-view field — another optical phenomenon like the sights on the Yala-Zev.

“Hey, do you think we might just skip Candila and go straight home in this one?” Glimmer jokingly suggests.

“I _do_ need to sleep at some point,” Bow says.

The whole trip to Yelsie is over in an hour, but they skip the city entirely, riding a mile south of it and directly off the beach onto the gentle waves of the middle seas.

Glimmer perks forward, and points to the sky. “Look — slow down.”

Bow eases on the brakes by simply pulling on the steering bar, and the speeder slows to a stop above the rolling waves.

There’s no need to open the canopy, as the skyview is wide and its material crystal clear. Glimmer turns in her seat, almost striking Juliet with a wing that unfolds in the excitement, and digs out a pair of binoculars.

She hands them to Bow, who looks. “Yeah, that’s a Horde aircraft.”

“Wanna bet Adora’s on it?”

“I don’t gamble when I know I’ll lose,” Bow replies. “She has to be. When we get back to the Hidden Library, I’ll track the Aegis.”

Glimmer sits back down — there’s no seatbelts, because the seats themselves simply hold down their occupants with unseen force in case of a crash; indeed the whole cabin does — and they speed out to sea.

“We’ve got ships coming up,” Juliet says, consulting the on-board radar. While Bow took driving lessons, she’s been figuring out how to co-pilot this thing. Glimmer raided the arsenal, the infirmary, the tool rooms, the library, and the kitchen.

Glimmer handles the binoculars. “None of these; they must have gone back south. Could have made the whole trip, really.”

A two day trip by steamboat is really just hours of travel by speeder.

“You know, it struck me,” Glimmer says. “Remember those Horde vehicles back in Thaymor? Looked like skiffs, but hovered like this one.”

“Now that you say it, yeah,” Bow says.

Juliet points to the screen. “It says you can go faster; weather’s good.”

Bow shrugs, and pushes forward, and the craft accelerates smoothly once more to truly blinding speeds.

More ships. None of them are the Salinean Royal Yacht. Until one of them is.

Bow eases way off on the engine, and take them in for a smooth approach to one of the accompanying interceptors.

The crew is more bewildered than wary as they pull up next to the larger craft.

Juliet pops the canopy, and Glimmer stands. “Well met, Salineans!” she calls.

“Ohoy!” the Captain — or maybe the first mate — replies.

“I am Princess Glimmer of Brightmoon; permission to approach the Royal Yacht?”

“Permission granted, your Majesty.”

Glimmer sits, giving a final wave, the canopy closes, and they glide over the waves to the yacht.

Again, they draw stares. Glimmer takes off and lands on the deck, flagging down the nearest servant. “I have urgent business with the Empress; where can I find her?”

“Top Sundeck, ma’am.”

Glimmer jumps the rail, flaps her wings twice to gain altitude, then revers and lands gracefully on the sundeck.

“Glimmer?” Mermista asks. She’s lying on a deck recliner, evidently having been disturbed in a tanning session, judging from her state of undress.

“Mermista; Adora’s been captured. Are you up for another rescue mission?”

Mermista groans. “Yes. Always. Of course it had to happen in the middle of my vacation.”

“You’ll do it?”

“For Adora? Anything.”

Sea Hawk comes up the stairs at the end of the sundeck, carrying their daughter on his shoulders. “Oh look, Adora, it’s your auntie Glimmer.”

 _For Adora, Anything,_ Glimmer thinks. “I’m sorry, I really can’t stay for long; I need to gather the others. Sea Hawk, Little Adora,” she says, then turns to and steps onto the railing, jumping off and gliding down to the speeder.

She closes the canopy by the manual handle as she lands. “Punch it.”

Bow does, and they accelerate to top speed once more.

“Do you think Meteora or Peftasteri will want to come?” Bow asks.

“I doubt it.”

“What are you actually planning?” Juliet asks.

Glimmer leans back. “I don’t have a finished plan yet, but I’m thinking we gain entrance to the Fright Zone where we once egressed: the Waygate. Me, Mermista, probably ’Tossa and Spinny, maybe Perfuma, maybe Frosta, maybe even Peekablue for an encore performance; although after Apieria I really don’t trust anyone who would marry such a woman.”

“So what about us?” Juliet asks.

“I’m not asking you to come, but I’m not Adora. I’ve had men die under my command, and I won’t let such fears hinder me.”


	16. I Think We Will Be Heading Out Again Soon, Reader.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Adora tries to prevent calamity.
> 
> Catra causes it unwittingly.
> 
> In the aftermath, the war turns ugly.
> 
> And then it gets worse.

#  [Who Cares When You are Gone](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27511408/chapters/67275025)

...

And in the center of it, is Hordak. Walking down the aisles between the machines in a fine suit with long coat-tails, surrounded by an entourage of chief engineers and stateswomen.

Scorpia goes forward. “Supreme Chancellor Hordak, sir!”

The crowd around him stills. “Ah, Lieutenant Scorpia. What might I help you with?”

Scorpia comes closer, but is stopped by two special services officers in black uniforms bearing only the red Horde insignia on the chest.

“Well, it’s a… Sensitive matter, concerning some Irst-fay Nes-oy Echnology-tay.”

Hordak’s thin smile fades. “Ladies and gentlemen, I must bid you farewell; this is a matter that I must discuss in confidence.”

The group of lab-coat-wearing engineers and stateswomen in formal-wear disperse.

Hordak follows Scorpia back to the corner where the others are holed up.

“Catra. Why am I not surprised you survived.”

Catra unravels the scarf covering her mouth. “You might also recognize this one, Chancellor.”

“I do indeed. Adora, was it? She-Ra.”

“Chancellor,” Adora says, standing straight.

“I take it you assumed I would be amused by this; that you would be allowed to substitute capturing the object of your obsessions, with bringing me the First-Ones tech I sent you after. No matter. The firing squad will see to you soon enough.”

Hordak turns on one heel and begins to walk away.

“It’s a spacecraft,” Catra says. “ _Hers._ ”

Hordak turns back to face her. “Elaborate.”

...

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you like _The Humility to Ask for Help_ please read on in the next installment in the epic fanfic series _World War Etheria._


End file.
